Elise K. Burton, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (New Texts Out Now)

Elise K. Burton, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (New Texts Out Now)

Elise K. Burton, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (New Texts Out Now)

By : Elise K. Burton

Elise K. Burton, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021).

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

Elise K. Burton (EB): I started conceptualizing the book’s topic when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. I was a double major in Middle Eastern studies and in biology, and everyone I knew constantly commented that this was an odd combination of subjects but could not articulate why. I worked in a genetics laboratory attached to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and I remember constantly walking by a poster on their wall describing the work of one curator (James Patton) who had conducted research in Iran just a few years earlier. The connections were right in front of us! In a course on human genetics, we read about the then recent research on the Cohen modal haplotype, which was interpreted to mean that all Jewish communities were genetically related and descended from a Middle Eastern ancestor. I remember looking at the diagrams purporting to show the genetic relationships of different Jewish groups to Middle Eastern populations labeled “Lebanese” or “Saudi Arabian” and so on. At the same time, I was studying the formation of Middle Eastern nationalisms in the courses of Salim Tamari, Emily Gottreich, and others and understanding that the national and religious categories referenced in the genetic studies were barely more than a century old—not exactly an evolutionary timescale. By the time I decided to apply for a PhD, these experiences led me to say that I wanted to write a history about the relationship between ethnic nationalisms and the science of genetics in the Middle East.

I tried to offer a history of genetics narrated from Middle Eastern sources and perspectives.

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

EB: The book brings together two scholarly literatures that are brilliant and well-developed on their own but have not overlapped much. First is the literature on Middle Eastern ethnic and national identities, which has engaged only in a very limited way with the history of science in general and racializing sciences (including human genetics) in particular. The scholars who have written about physical anthropology, race science, and eugenics in the Middle East have mainly focused on the period before 1950, and analyzed the relationships between these sciences and nationalist ideas mainly in a localized way, rather than portraying the Middle East as representative of a worldwide history of science.

Second, we have the literature on the history of genetics and race science which showcases the co-constitution of scientific and sociopolitical beliefs about national origins and ethnic ancestries. However, until now, the history of science has been Eurocentric in its focus; non-Europeans have been portrayed as having limited agency, serving as either victims of, or neutral conduits of information to, European and North American scientists. In this book, I tried to offer a history of genetics narrated from Middle Eastern sources and perspectives. For me, Middle Eastern scientific actors are full-fledged scientists and their work has shaped the international history of genetics. At the same time, Middle Eastern scientists should not be taken as heroic figures, but rather as three-dimensional humans who had sometimes contradictory motivations and discriminatory beliefs. There are troubling examples in the book of scientists who exploited and even actively harmed the religious and ethnic minority communities that they studied. In many cases, genetic scientists in the past—as quite a few still do today—claimed that their research exposed the ultimate truth regarding a community’s origins and ancestral relationships, while knowing that ancestry claims would de/legitimize that community’s civil rights or aspirations for self-determination. The book grapples with these ongoing ethical problems in genetic research as well. 

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

EB: Although it is a scholarly book, I worked hard to make my writing as clear as possible and I hope that general audiences, including within the Middle East, will be able to read it. I believe that the historical and ongoing issues I discuss in the book are relevant to anyone interested in nationalism, ethnicity, and race, and anyone who wants to understand what genetic research really means for these identities. Specifically, I hope this book can help prevent Middle Eastern people, in the region and in the diaspora, from falling for the seductive narratives of corporations selling “genetic ancestry” tests that purport to tell them whether they are “really” Armenians or Kurds or Jews or whatever. Ethnic identity is a social experience, the meaning of which changes over time, and your DNA cannot tell you your ethnicity; yet, governments around the world are increasingly making use of similar genetic ancestry data to try to deport people or exclude them from citizenship rights. There is a story in the book about a young Lebanese anthropologist in the 1950s whose friends and teachers ask him to measure their heads and tell them their “real” ethnicity, all in good fun—I hope readers realize that contemporary DNA tests for ethnic ancestry, despite using more advanced technology, are no different than this historical example. 

Finally, this book is for everyone who wants to read a history of modern science that places the Middle East at the center. I hope this book becomes part of a bigger trend of scholarship and popular media that breaks old stereotypes suggesting that the region has not contributed to major discoveries in science and medicine since a medieval “golden age.” In the future, I want to read the research of young Middle East scholars who pick up where I have left off. I also want to see new documentaries, museum exhibits, and other media that showcase the role of the Middle East in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science—these can help change public discourses on the topics I write about.

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

EB: This is my first book, and most of my previously published articles are related to this project in one aspect or another. Another project I completed long ago was a comparative study of how state education systems in Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia address the teaching of evolutionary biology. That project engaged with several broad themes related to this book, such as the interaction of scientific knowledge production with political and social ideologies. However, that project was very much about contemporary events and policies, whereas Genetic Crossroads is truly a historical book in its sources and analysis. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

EB: I am starting a new project about the history of trans-Asian scientific collaborations—specifically, a set of collaborative relationships between scientists in Turkey, Iran, India, and Japan. I am continuing to analyze the research of medical geneticists, but also expanding to examine the fields of archaeology and dermatoglyphics (the scientific study of fingerprint patterns). I am particularly interested in examining what kinds of ideas about shared Asian racial ancestry and nationalized differences are used or produced by these collaborations. Furthermore, I am looking to understand whether the kinds of power dynamics I observed in European-Middle Eastern scientific collaborations were similar or different to those in trans-Asian collaborations. Although the idea for this project specifically emerged out of unexpected connections I discovered while researching Genetic Crossroads, I am excited to be part of an emerging trend of scholarship that aims to look beyond the Middle East’s fraught relationship with “the West” and instead investigate the region’s historical connections to other parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 6, “Genes Against Beans,” pp. 154-157) 

Shortly after the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Jewish pediatrician Richard Lederer left the University of Vienna to take up a post at the Royal College of Medicine in Baghdad. Lederer, with his reputation as a dedicated physician and clinical investigator, was also appointed the personal pediatrician of young Faisal II, then the Crown Prince of Iraq. Despite this privileged position, Lederer had trouble adjusting to the Mesopotamian climate and diagnosing unfamiliar “tropical” diseases in his new patients. His Iraqi colleagues drew his attention to one particular condition, a seasonal phenomenon of acute anemia, jaundice, and dark urine in young children. After differentiating these symptoms from likely suspects, such as the “blackwater fever” caused by malaria and quinine treatment, Lederer began a concerted investigation to characterize what he believed to be a previously unknown disease, which he named “Baghdad spring anemia.” In the course of his research, he discovered the Italian medical literature on favismo (favism), a condition brought on by the consumption of fava beans that allegedly occurred only among the inhabitants of Sicily and Sardinia. Lederer noted that favism had markedly similar symptoms to those of his own patients, and he found that many of them had eaten fava beans immediately before the onset of illness. However, he was unable to conclusively show that fava beans were the causative agent. Lederer therefore published a description of Baghdad spring anemia as a separate disorder with curious demographic features: all his patients were “light-complexioned” boys under age five, and thirteen out of fourteen were Iraqi Jews.

After Lederer’s untimely death by skin disease in early 1941, the task of confirming that Baghdad spring anemia and favism were the same disorder fell to a new group of researchers: European-trained Ashkenazi Jews, like Lederer, studying Iraqi Jewish immigrants to Israel in the late 1950s. By that time, this obscure and exotic disease of the Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent formed the basis for a transnational network of medical researchers extending from Seattle and Chicago to Naples, Tel Aviv, and Shiraz. Favism rapidly attracted this international attention due to the discovery of its cause: a hereditary deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). G6PD plays an important role in energy metabolism in the cells of all kinds of organisms, from bacteria to plants and animals. In humans, G6PD is crucial for the protection of red blood cells from oxidative stress. Mutations in the gene responsible for producing G6PD can result in abnormally low levels of the enzyme, i.e., G6PD deficiency (G6PDd). Certain medications, infections, and foods like fava beans may cause the rupture of red blood cells in individuals with this deficiency, producing anemia and jaundice. In mild cases, this may be experienced only as fatigue and shortness of breath, but severe cases may lead to organ failure and death. G6PDd is currently recognized as the most common inherited enzyme deficiency in the world, with recent estimates of 400 million people affected.

However, the prevalence of the condition is not evenly distributed. Because the G6PD gene is located on the X chromosome, clinical symptoms of the deficiency manifest more often in males than in females. Furthermore, mutations causing the deficiency occur most frequently in African, Asian, and Mediterranean populations. The form of G6PDd most common in Africa is relatively mild, whereas the genetic variant common across the Mediterranean and Middle East—the one responsible for favism—is more severe. Favism had long been recognized as a potentially serious condition by local peoples, whose historical lore and folk medicine included warnings against the consumption of fava beans. However, its incorporation into a major international research agenda began only in the 1950s, in concert with postwar malaria treatment and eradication programs. Because certain antimalarial drugs trigger acute hemolytic anemia in G6PD-deficient patients, the discovery of G6PDd and the determination of its biochemical and genetic characteristics was a direct outgrowth of malaria research. Its relevance to malaria drove national health agencies to allocate funding specifically to G6PDd surveys in many countries throughout the 1960s, while the World Health Organization (WHO) convened expert committees to standardize terminology and methodology for the growing number of researchers working across the Americas, Southern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Despite its close connection to antimalaria campaigns, from the moment of its discovery, G6PDd took on not only clinical but also anthropological significance. In the United States, University of Chicago researchers first characterized the condition during the Stateville Penitentiary malaria projects, which used prisoners to test a range of new antimalarial drugs. They found that about 10 percent of African American prisoners, but not white ones, developed hemolytic anemia in response to primaquine; a further study published in 1956 demonstrated that a deficiency of G6PD caused this response. Like the simultaneous research conducted on sickle cell disease, the U.S.-based studies of G6PDd initially framed the condition as a “Negro” disease indicative of African ancestry. But after studies in Italy and Israel independently confirmed that G6PD deficiency was also the cause of favism, geneticists influenced by the Chicago school, like Arno G. Motulsky, sought to explain the deficiency’s prevalence among both Africans and the “Caucasians” of the Mediterranean and Middle East. After reviewing a compilation of available data from Central Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean, Motulsky proposed that G6PDd, like sickle cell trait and thalassemia, could confer resistance to falciparum malaria parasites. Therefore, he argued, natural selection acted to maintain the defective gene within populations inhabiting regions of endemic malaria.

Yet the data that Motulsky compiled from South and West Asia introduced a potentially confounding factor into his malaria selection hypothesis. Like sickle cell disease, the frequency of favism in these regions varied significantly between groups inhabiting the same environment but divided by social factors like religion, language, and tribal affiliation. These genetic variations therefore mapped onto major social contestations in the young nation-states of the Middle East. Focusing on the years between 1955 and 1970, this chapter traces how medical researchers in the Middle East used favism to create a medical-anthropological discourse that projected contemporary nationalist ideologies deep into the past. Scientists in Israel and Iran configured a metabolic response to both modern pharmaceuticals and traditional cuisine as living testimony to thousands of years of migration, war, slavery, religious conversion, and social transformation. Reduced quantities of the G6PD enzyme in a handful of individuals became the basis for dramatic assertions about the ancestry of ethnoreligious communities and, by extrapolation, about national origins.

I argue that by favoring locally specific narratives over universal explanations like the malaria hypothesis, favism research in the Middle East expressed ambivalence about the international public health regimes and biomedical research agendas directed by Europe and the United States during this period. As in the case of sickle cell disease, this ambivalence did not necessarily represent ideological rifts between Western and Middle Eastern researchers but rather produced factions of scientists who favored different kinds of evolutionary hypotheses. The distinguishing feature of favism lies in its entanglement with malaria not only as an abstract force of gradual natural selection but also as an immediate public health issue. Furthermore, the disorder’s unique interaction with fava beans, a significant protein source in the Middle East, made it a concern for national and international management of agriculture and public nutrition. Medical researchers from these different fields all confronted the urgent need to address the ethnic and religious variability of favism rates. As a result, the faction that converged around Israeli and Iranian ethnonational explanations for genetic difference included a number of American and European scientists who collaborated with physicians in those countries.

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.