Sabri Ciftci, Islam, Justice, and Democracy (New Texts Out Now)

Sabri Ciftci, Islam, Justice, and Democracy (New Texts Out Now)

Sabri Ciftci, Islam, Justice, and Democracy (New Texts Out Now)

By : Sabri Ciftci

Sabri Ciftci, Islam, Justice, and Democracy (Temple University Press, 2021). 

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? 

Sabri Ciftci (SC): I started working on Islam, Justice, and Democracy in 2013, the year marking the return of authoritarianism and conflict to most of the Middle East after two years of protests and regime transitions. Much has been said about the Arab Spring, but not much has been offered about the culture of these extraordinary protests including its religious foundations. As a student of Islam and democracy, I am truly fascinated by the Islamic discourses of rebellion and liberation. I wrote this book to explain how Islamic justice discourses have shaped political preferences and actions of devout men and women since the beginning of Islamic history. I wanted to understand how Islam shapes Muslims' conceptions of justice and how these affect their perceptions of democracy and authoritarianism. I wrote this book to provide new insights about justice and democracy from the perspective of devout Muslim men and women.

This book focuses on Muslim agency to study “Muslims and democracy” rather than “Islam and democracy.”

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

SC: There are numerous studies explaining the lack of democracy in the Muslim world with institutional, economic, or macro historical factors. Some of these studies use a civilizational approach to present Islam as hostile to democracy; others try to introduce native theories looking for Islamic roots of pluralism. This book focuses on Muslim agency to study “Muslims and democracy” rather than “Islam and democracy.” The volume employs a novel perspective by focusing on one of the principal values of the Islamic faith, namely justice (al-‘adl) to explain the religious roots of Muslim political preferences—so far a neglected topic in the study of Muslim politics. In the book, I explore the historical trajectories of Islamic justice conceptions and show how discourses about these conceptions have been consequential for political action or inaction from past to present. This main argument is supported from different angles. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a first systematic treatment of Islamist justice theory from the classical period to the modern age. Chapter 4 presents a novel interpretation of two most influential Islamist philosophers in the twentieth century, Sayyid Qutb and ‘Ali Shariati, by reconstructing their political philosophies around the Islamic notions of agency (khalifa) and benevolence (ihsan). This approach introduces new theoretical possibilities about the religious roots of political preferences. Chapter 5 provides discourse analysis of Islamist journals to demonstrate how Islamists reconstructed discourses of order to support the status quo against the perceived “communist threat” during the Cold War. Chapter 6, on the other hand, traces the continuing legacies of Islamist justice conceptions and their influence on political preferences through in-depth interviews with the members of new Islamist movements in Turkey. As such, Chapters 5 and 6 provide the first empirical account of the associations between justice conceptions and democracy in the Islamist mindset. Finally, in Chapters 7 and 8, the volume also introduces a quantitative assessment about the impact of justice values such as egalitarianism and perceptions of political injustices on democratic attitudes and protest behavior. 

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

SC: Most of my previous work has focused on Muslim religiosity and democratic orientations and has employed a quantitative approach. For example, in “Modernization, Islam, or Social Capital,” I found no correlation between religiosity and support for democracy whereas in “Secular-Islamist Cleavage,” I found statistically meaningful associations between Islamic values and support for sharia and democracy. In “Islam, Social Justice, and Democracy,” I started to explore the potential of Islamic social justice values on democratic orientations. This volume departs from my earlier work in several ways. First, rather than merely focusing on piety and democracy, the book explores religious values and their potential in engendering both democratic and authoritarian legitimacy claims. Second, I use a mixed-methods approach by combining statistical analysis of survey data with in-depth interviews and archival and textual analysis of Islamist writings. Finally, the book moves beyond contemporary political preferences and brings historical evidence from the early history of Islam, the medieval period, nineteenth-century constitutionalist movements, and the Arab Spring to trace the historical trajectories of justice, the evolution of discourses of order and freedom, and foundations of political regimes in the Muslim world. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

SC: First and foremost, I hope this book will be of interest to academics and students of Islam, politics, and Middle East studies. For this group, I would like the book to be an example of social scientific work embedded in Islamic principles and rich histories of the Muslim world. Second, given the large amount of misinformation about Islam and various political ideologies, I hope the book will be a source for the pundits and broader public providing objective and evidence-based knowledge about Islam and politics. It should be a corrective to civilizational arguments depicting Islam and its political implications in negative and orientalist ways. The book invites scholars, pundits, and policymakers who usually focus on the structural determinants of Muslim political preferences to think about Muslim agency, justice, and politics.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

SC: I would like to mention two projects I am working on now that are somewhat related to my book. The first project, a book proposal, explores the religious foundations of state-building in the Middle East. Specifically, I provide a novel perspective about state-building by exploring the interaction of heterodox dervishes with central administration in medieval Anatolia and during the classical period of the Ottoman Empire. This study is based on the idea that Islamic discourses of order and freedom clashed in Islamic history to shape Muslim politics. It aims to show that religious values influenced politics beyond such conceptions as legal frameworks, Sunni theology, subservient ulema, and political quietism. Rather, I argue that rebellions of unruly dervishes and the appeal of syncretic religious beliefs played a role in state-building in the Muslim world.

A second project explores contemporary manifestations of religious values as they relate to political preferences. This project looks at how natural events, disease, and religious landscapes shape Muslim religiosity, which in turn influences individualism as a determinant of democratic orientations. A recent article of mine providing a global empirical assessment about the impact of pathogen prevalence and dominance of Islam on religiosity and the collectivism-individualism framework is forthcoming in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

J: Can your book help us understand contemporary Muslim politics? 

SC: Yes. My book proposes that the first civil war (fitna or discord) in early Islamic history led to divergent discourses of order (political quietism) and freedom (political justice). Today, there are several regimes employing religious discourses of order to justify authoritarian rule. For example, when the Arab Spring protests broke out in 2011, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates used the services of religious scholars and the discourses of order to prevent dissent. Using religious references against dangers of disorder and conflict as threats to the welfare of Islamic society is not a recent strategy. Discourses of order were also used to counter the so-called “threat of communism” in the 1960s and 1970s across the Muslim world. At this time, Islamists framed communism as a dangerous ideology threatening the order and morals of Muslim society. Similar discourses of order were used by the Turkish president Erdoğan during a formidable challenge to his rule (Gezi protests in 2013). He framed these protests as unruly demonstrations carried by “looters” threatening the order of society, harming religion, and creating discord (i.e fitna). Nonetheless, a group of Islamists who opposed Erdogan were also among the protestors. My book explains these contradictory stances with the divergent trajectories of religious discourses and the accompanying political preferences.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Conclusion, pp. 151-155)

The resilience of ordinary people taking to the streets in the Arab Spring and their strong desire for democracy is extraordinary for a region known for robust authoritarianism. These protests also reflected a longing for justice, Islamic faith’s primary value. Many observers discredited the role of religion in the Arab Spring. Like its predecessors, the protests in various squares and corners of the Arab world were not religious revolutions, but religion did play a significant role in these uprisings. This is because Islam has always been a formidable social force shaping values, attitudes, and behavior over centuries. Justice was the most significant value in the dis- courses of the Arab Spring protesters. Ironically, the counterdiscourse against the Arab Spring also used religious conceptions of justice to undermine the protests. How can Islamic justice simultaneously be a source for democratic and authoritarian discourses? 

Two years after the Arab uprisings, participation of some Islamist groups in the Gezi Park protests against an Islamist party with the word “justice” in its name, in Turkey, was quite puzzling. These groups’ discourses of freedom heavily relied on Islamic conceptions of justice. However, AKP also used the Islamic justice conception to undermine the legitimacy of Gezi protests. From Cairo to Istanbul, both people’s quest for democracy and the repression of these demands were justified by the Islamic conceptions of justice. This book is about “Islam and democracy,” a significant puzzle that kept many intellectuals, scholars, and pundits busy for many years. It argues that justice discourses are the substance of this puzzle, stimulating rival legitimacy claims about governance. This volume tried to understand these discourses and their relation to democracy by examining the implications of conceptions of justice in Muslim agency’s attitudes and behavior. 

The legacies of Islamic justice engender rival legitimacy claims about governance. While Islamic justice values and the related preferences and orientations may provide a cultural foundation for democratic thinking, the same forces may also justify authoritarianism. In fact, Islamic conceptions of justice are also used to legitimize the authoritarian rule, which has been the prevailing governance model for much of Islamic history. This outcome resulted from many factors, including the alliance of political and religious elites and the monopoly of legal tradition as a truth-claim controlling the social, religious, and political spheres against the philosophical and mystic alternatives. While acknowledging that there might be a path to authoritarian rule passing through Islamic discourses of obedience and order, this volume did not deal with this complicated history, leaving it to future studies as a fruitful research endeavor. However, the book made a case for the role Islamic conceptions of justice can play in stimulating mass democratic tendencies in Muslim democratization.

This conclusion about Islam’s potential to engender democratization relies on two interrelated trends within the Islamic tradition. First, starting from the doctrine that man is God’s vicegerent, one Islamic worldview gave way to critical thinking, flexible interpretations of religion, and a political stance against injustice—all implied by a specific understanding of Islamic justice. Second, throughout Islamic history, this worldview became the basis of numerous uprisings, rebellions, and revolutions—most prominently in the modern age and with respect to democracy. 

Previous chapters deployed evidence from Islamist texts, public opinion surveys, and ethnographic research to demonstrate that Islamic conceptions of justice shape prodemocratic attitudes and value orientations among ordinary men and women in the Muslim world. Based on this evidence, a critical implication of this study is that devout Muslims support and want democracy because of their preferences and orientations originating from Islamic conceptions of justice. Two caveats should be mentioned. First, the Muslim agency’s support for democracy is contingent on the perception of democracy as a regime with a comparative advantage in implementing social and political justice by most religious citizens in a given polity. Such perception is related to the central role of justice in Islam and democracy’s capacity in generating public deliberation according to rational-civic reason, allowing the realization and enactment of Islamic justice. Second, despite favorable opinion and numerous waves of mass mobilization to bring democracy to the Muslim lands, domestic and international forces prevented the realization of this goal. The centripetal force of masses toward democratization has been countered by the centrifugal force of domestic dictators and their international collaborators, resulting in authoritarian, corrupt, and inefficient governments in Muslim-majority societies. This volume did not explore these centrifugal forces in detail, which, among other strategies, use security and order-oriented discourses of justice to maintain authoritarian political systems in the Muslim world. Exploring the linkages between Islam, justice discourses, and these centrifugal forces will be a fertile research subject for future studies. 

This book’s explanatory framework relied on a stylistic distinction between social and political justice. Islamic conceptions of justice originate from two critical junctures that gave way to lasting legacies in Muslim politics. Significant political events accompanied by conceptual, theological, and ideological debates marked these moments. The first critical juncture came about after Muhammad’s passing. Succession to the Prophet and the leadership question divided the first Muslim community, seen as a perfect society despite simmering disagreement in the background. Such disagreement resulted in the first civil war between ʿAli and Muʿāwiya’s supporters and other groups who did not affiliate with them. These parties claimed to uphold justice and came up with justifications about their entitlement to rule the Muslim community. Their inspiration was the same, Koran and Muhammad. Nevertheless, they reached contrasting opinions about what justice is and how it should be implemented in a community of supposedly pure believers. It was all political in the beginning, and the debates concentrated on such issues as the right to rule, legitimacy, and a wise ruler’s morals. Political rhetoric spilled over into the doctrinal/legal sphere, and the latter eventually came to shape the former over time as the initial divisions repeated with different actors creating new traumas over time.

This first communal division and the resulting differences in doctrine, law, and Islamic interpretations are the foundations of various political theories building on conceptions of justice. Two legacies followed this first critical juncture. Some believed in free will, individual choice, and man’s responsibility as God’s vicegerent to represent a principled opposition and mobilization against tyranny for establishing political justice. A second position started from the necessity of bringing order and security to the community long-marred with fitna and conflict. Thus, it was unethical and against God’s justice to rebel against a ruler, even if unjust. These two positions left a lasting imprint on Muslim political experience to shape values, preferences, and attitudes over centuries. The first position culminated in democratic and the latter authoritarian orientations. At the turn of the twentieth century, the first constitutionalist movements built on these legacies to develop democratic solutions to the state decline and prevent foreign intervention. Discourses of Islamic justice were instrumental in reaching masses and mobilizing them for this cause. Coating modern political ideas with Islamic justice has been the primary strategy in independence movements, labor mobilization, and popular uprisings since the nineteenth century. Arab Spring is the latest example of this approach as observed in the contentious acts demanding justice and freedom in MENA. On the flip side, traditional political forces similarly built on the authoritarian implications of the political justice trajectory. Their justifications for a type of enlightened despotism relied on discourses of predetermination, order and security, rulers’ wisdom, and forbearance. Despite favorable public opinion and widespread mass action for a democratic system, various domestic and ex- ternal forces prevented democracy from taking root in Muslim-majority societies. The main conclusion of this book, nonetheless, remains—religious Muslims long for democracy and periodically take action to bring it home. 

A second critical juncture came about when the Muslim world faced disintegration and suffered under the Mongol invasion. While political jus- tice discourses still mattered regarding rulers’ qualities and executive constraints imposed by Islamic law’s imperatives, it was the imminent danger to society that concerned the scholars most. In the face of weakening political authority, the primary issue became the protection of society: The state should protect life, property, religion, and progeny to ensure order and security. Welfare and public interest were the primary concerns of the scholars at that time. To prevent the abuse of power and implement social justice, scholars aimed to keep the rulers in check according to the end goals of sharia. In reality, however, this political arrangement gave more power to the rulers and resulted in the co-optation of scholars. A new social justice paradigm legitimized the authoritarian rule to the extent that an abstract notion of public interest took precedence over individual well-being and human dignity. Justice discourses of order, security, and public interest strengthened the hand of “benevolent dictators.” To the extent that a ruler provided security, order, and public goods or protected the religion, the benefits of obedience to him would outweigh the cost of rebellion for freedom and justice. In a sense, a particular lineage of social justice trumps the freedom-oriented lineage of political justice to legitimize authoritarianism.  

This excerpt is taken from Islam, Justice, and Democracy with courtesy of Temple University Press.

Front cover image credit © Hassan Massoudy with courtesy of Temple University Press.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.