José Ciro Martínez, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (New Texts Out Now)

José Ciro Martínez, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (New Texts Out Now)

José Ciro Martínez, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (New Texts Out Now)

José Ciro Martínez, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2022).

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

José Ciro Martínez (JCM): A healthy dose of gluttony and several unforeseen friendships. The book’s origins lie in a homestay I did more than a decade ago in Damascus. A few days in, I discovered that the father of the family was a mana’ish maker, dabbling sporadically in bread. I have had a life-long fondness for carbohydrates, so avidly offered an extra pair of hands, quietly hopeful that I could eat to my heart’s content. Days at the bakery soon became part of my routine—the grind was addictive, the camaraderie unexpected. When I reflect on that formative period, I know the foundations for this book were all firmly laid then.

Of course, the intervening years (and the demands of the academe) have led the book to be inflected by a set of scholarly considerations. Most consistent among these was a frustration with subsidized bread’s place in accounts of Middle East politics. Despite its omnipresence, bread has always functioned as the prompt for a story about social contracts and authoritarianism, a metonym for the exchange of sustenance for compliance. As an object of inquiry itself, bread has been largely overlooked. And so I wondered, what would an account that centered subsidized bread illuminate and reveal? Could probing one foodstuff help elucidate mechanisms of rule and modes of living amidst them?

But in truth, the most sincere response is probably best conveyed by an M.F.K. Fisher quote I return to often: “The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.”

Subsidized bread is the contingent outcome of humans and nonhumans working together and in cooperation ...

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

JCM: States of Subsistence is foremost an ethnography of the Jordanian state, examining the latter in places where it is rarely disinterred and dissected. Through a variety of settings and historical moments, and in conversation with a diverse range of interlocutors, the book seeks not just to interrogate the state’s apparent unity or expose its inconsistencies, but to think through some of the ways the state maintains its solidity and inevitability. How? Through what practices and modes of address? 

I tackle this question through the prism of khubz ‘arabi (Arabic or pita bread) and the welfare program that ensures its discounted provision. I was frustrated by how welfare services were studied by political scientists, who far too frequently elide the objects, people, and ideas that compose such services, as well as their productive effects. But what quickly became apparent to me at the bakery is that subsidized bread is a living and lively thing. As readers will learn, ambiguous regulations, haphazard standardizations, convoluted decisions, and fluctuating ingredients permeate this welfare program. Subsidized bread is the contingent outcome of humans and nonhumans working together and in cooperation, a marshalling of agencies that coalesce to make khubz ‘arabi not only cheap and accessible, but edible and appetizing. 

While this welfare program is composed of an amalgam of socio-material practices, its regularity, uniformity, and arrangement create the effect of a structure—the state—that seems to exist outside this world of practice, separate from the society it organizes, manages, and dominates. That is to say, welfare has performative dimensions. It is not simply a reflection or result but a congealing that acts and does, authorizes and renews a set of relations that produce an effect. And so I examine these relations—at and around the bakery, amongst bakers and bureaucrats, along with ordinary people and policymakers. The literatures addressed are diverse, I draw copiously from geography, anthropology, and political theory, which all help me unpack why bread is there and what it is doing. How come bread never lacks, when so many other things do? What are the politics of this food? 

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

JCM: It is intimately connected, if only because I am very much at the outset of my career. Subsidized bread, whether in Syria or Jordan, has been at the center of almost everything I have written. I made missteps in some of the earlier writings, ones I hope to have corrected in the book. If I were to identify a common thread, it would be the place of subsistence in mechanisms of rule and an abiding interest in the ways political authority transpires amidst the seemingly unglamorous and unspectacular day-to-day. 

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

JCM: After my interlocutors in Jordan, I would start with enthusiasts of ethnography. Much of what I tried to do—both in the field and while writing—was inspired by encounters with wonderful instances of participant observation and observant participation that I read and went back to while working on this book. If States of Subsistence can entertain and incite in just half the ways certain works did for me, that would be incredibly rewarding.

Audiences who I hope will read the book, engage with its arguments, and find it stimulating are students and scholars of comparative politics, geography, anthropology, sociology, and Middle East studies; Jordanians and anyone interested in the country; bakers—both amateur and professional; and all those who wrestle with the attractions, revulsions, and ambivalences that have come to characterize living with the state. And perhaps some others, who may be drawn by my efforts to underscore the political import of the everyday, repurpose the concept of performativity, and think through modes of government that have repeatedly failed us, yet continue to loom large over our collective existence.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

JCM: I am currently in the midst of fieldwork for a new project, one that seeks to explore iterations of sovereignty via the production and trafficking of hashish in southern Spain and northern Morocco. This has meant a turn away from food and welfare provision towards a very different type of commodity, although its implications for practices of government are, I think, no less important. The project is equally driven by ethnographic concerns and modes of political inquiry attentive to the ordinary and mundane, a commitment I hope comes through clearly in the book.

J: With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting rise in energy and food prices, there has been ample discussion of potential impacts in the import-dependent countries of the Middle East. Can we expect unrest if bread prices increase?

JCM: We do the people of the region a disservice when we consider bread solely (or even primarily) through such a reductive lens. Surely rising prices will hit the poor and working classes, as they will elsewhere in the world. But to speak of the presence of the state, one linked to the availability of bread and the sensations emanating from the bakery, as the book does, takes us in a very different direction than the sort of instrumentalism implied in terms such as bread riots or bread revolutions. This is not to say, however, that political concerns are not integral to such a perspective. It just means that, if we foreground questions of authority and power, we should look at these events in an altogether different manner.

Bread has undoubtedly been at the center of a wide array of contentious episodes in the Middle East. Yet in no instance was bread a passive symbol or facile evidence of anger, indignation, and rage. Insomuch as the hold that states have on us is shaped by our experience of particular governmental programs, the milieus within which citizens are formed will play a key role in determining how and when unrest forms. But to assume that hunger and deprivation, or the price of bread, are the straightforward drivers of dissent, obscures the complicated ways people encounter and respond to their historical emplacement.

By unpacking the Jordanian bread subsidy, States of Subsistence dissects how welfare programs operate in relation to the hegemonic orders they frequently enshrine. A corollary of such an approach is to interrogate how the forces that govern us are produced and reproduced. And so the book explores: Are citizens implicated in that which they contest, rely on, or criticize? Does the state subsist by forming and fashioning the very mechanisms that underpin our agency? Resistance and revolution may indeed be possible. But for now we remain scrupulously situated within the state’s orbit, longing for its company and consolation, even as we decry its abuses and mistreatments. An escape may very well be required, but I wonder, do we have anywhere to go?

 

Excerpt from the book (from pp. ix-xii) 

Preface: Breadlines

On a cold Saturday morning in early November, Zayd and I leave his house, walk a couple of blocks, and join a single-file line. About ten people are ahead of us; another five soon join behind. The queue moves swiftly. It always does. While we wait, an unmistakable aroma wafts through the air. A scent impossible to confuse, and even harder to resist. The local bakery is in full swing, and the breeze carries the distinctive smell of bread. We come here often, and Zayd’s order is always the same—three kilograms of bread, fresh out of the oven—what he describes as the vital component of his family’s breakfast of hummus, falafel, and ful (fava beans).

Across the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, variations of this scene occur every day. Families pick up bread to make a speedy breakfast before school. Construction workers briefly pause their labors to collect items for their second meal of the day. Friends gather to eat after football. Office workers descend upon hectic sandwich stands during their breaks and commuters hastily gather supplies for dinner on the way home. More than nine million people reside in Jordan. Each day, they eat approximately ten million loaves of khubz ‘arabi—the slightly leavened flatbread also known as Arabic or pita bread. Some rely on this bread to avoid starvation, others to help make ends meet. For the more fortunate, it is an occasional pleasure, rather than a gauge of poverty. But inevitably, on all days and at all working hours, someone goes to the bakery, where khubz ‘arabi sells for the subsidized price of 16 qirsh (US$0.25) per kilogram. Without exception or exclusion. Devoid of doubts or apprehensions, without conditions or prerequisites. So easily accessible that one can forget the many hands that make it. So palpably present that one can overlook the vast array of actions required to provide it. “There’s bread,” Zayd beams as we wait. “There’s always bread.”

It took me some time to realize that these scenes and routines would become the indelible heart of this book. I had thought, and was often taught, that politics was entirely distinct from the mundane; that politics was about big institutions and even bigger events: revolutions, coups d’état, wars, elections. It required the detailed study of campaigns and coercion. Data sets were needed, large-scale surveys indispensable, lab experiments highly recommended. There was simply no occasion for the monotonous or humdrum, the dreary or commonplace. The real action happens elsewhere, I was led to believe, far from the tedium of the quotidian. And so I went in search of that “real action,” only to realize that the ordinary was more significant. Perhaps we are governed not at the level of the spectacular or the episodic but in the realm of the most mundane: the actions, experiences, and repetitions that make up the everyday.

We have all waited in line for food. Many of us have experienced analogous forms of anticipation or excitement while waiting for bread and baked goods. The familiar monotony of purchasing a basic foodstuff and consuming it among neighbors and co-workers makes such occasions easier to dismiss as having political import of any kind. This book, then, is a call to pause, to consider both the routine practicalities and broader repercussions of these moments. It addresses how subsidized bread is made, moved, and managed as well as the ways in which it is demanded, distributed, and desired. Most centrally, it asks why bread is there and what it is doing. How come bread is never lacking, when so many other things are? Why do so many in Jordan continue to demand that it be made available as a public good? What are the politics of this food? 

There are many ways to answer these questions. Several would lend themselves more easily to the comfort of an armchair or the efficiency of a linear regression. I chose another path—to situate myself as deeply and durably as possible in the processes I sought to examine. And to think with, rather than against or without, those from whom I learned and with whom I lived. I eschewed distant observation. Instead, I decided to bake. To blend, beat, dust, fold, knead, mix, mold, proof, punch, score, and soften. Week after week, loaf after loaf, with weak arms and terrible posture but no shortage of enthusiasm, I observed, listened, and participated. To better understand how bread becomes welfare, and how welfare becomes something else entirely.

This book is not a detailed study of Jordanian bakeries. Nor does it offer a social history of bread or bread riots. It is instead an attempt to study the state ethnographically, in places where it is rarely disinterred and displayed. These settings are varied and unevenly examined, but they all seek to illuminate how the state coheres—not as a thing or institution, but as an effect of power that assembles and entangles. My argument here does not just interrogate the state’s apparent unity or expose its inconsistencies, but thinks through some of the ways the state maintains its permanence and inevitability—the labors, echoes, and reverberations required to make an unwieldy set of processes transpire in its name. Despite its continual construction, the state appears robust and durable. Notwithstanding its manufacture, it feels and appears perpetually stable. How is this feat achieved? 

As it is only through practice that subjects and objects are actualized, this book examines material, bodily, and discursive practices in order to explore how the state becomes a tangible, thinkable entity among Jordanians. I have turned to the bakery and started with bread in order to approach power at its point of generation and consequence rather than the other way around. That is, I look at power where it occurs and see where that leads, rather than automatically attribute agency or actuality to someone or something. Examining bread may seem at f irst glance an odd way to do this. My own fascination with this foodstuff arose because I very much loved to devour it; only later did its import become discernible. Despite its undeniable ubiquity in accounts of Middle East politics, bread has always functioned as the prompt for a story about social contracts and authoritarianism, a metonym for the exchange of basic goods for acquiescence, sustenance for compliance. As an object of inquiry itself, bread has been all but invisible. We have little sense of how it is prepared and produced, used and consumed, discussed and circulated. Here I want to give a sense of these dynamics while drawing khubz ‘arabi, and the welfare program that ensures its discounted provision, into a constitutive relationship. Like sugar and oil, bread establishes connections and enacts realities, in careful alliance with people and things.

Foremost among these associations are those with the structure that is imagined and felt to provide the bread. And it is this relationship that I will scrutinize here, in order to explore how one foodstuff both governs and creates the effect of a structure doing the governing. Not to do away with the state, but to pursue more insistently the conditions of its emergence, operation, and reproduction. Without glorifying the ostensibly menial, this book seeks to reinsert the routine and commonplace into our thresholds of visibility and analysis. Perhaps we are formed, acted upon, and dominated—anchored in this world—not by structures that exist outside ourselves but through forms and practices folded within our bodies amid the unglamorous and unspectacular day-to-day. Maybe the forces that govern us do so not from a distance, but through the immediate and immanent—the rhythms and routines, the sociomaterial worlds in which we dwell, subsist, and survive. And yet . . . we do not live on bread alone. 

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.