Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (New Texts Out Now)

Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (New Texts Out Now)

Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (New Texts Out Now)

By : Bedross Der Matossian

Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2022).

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

Bedross Der Matossian (BDM): More than one hundred years ago, the province of Adana, in the southern section of the Ottoman empire and modern-day Turkey, witnessed two waves of violence that took the lives of thousands of people. More than twenty thousand Christians (predominantly Armenian, as well as some Greeks, Syriacs, and Chaldeans) were massacred by Muslims, and around two thousand Muslims were killed by Christians. Despite the massive bloodshed of the Adana massacres, most of the major books on late Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history fail to even mention these events. Where the massacres are considered in the historiography, the contested nature of the events has led to competing narratives. Starting from the premise that no such horrendous act happens in a vacuum, the aim of this book is to understand the full complexity of these massacres. The book attempts to interpret these events through a thorough analysis of the primary sources pertaining to the local, central, and international actors who were involved in the massacres as perpetrators, victims, or bystanders—something that has not been done yet in the academic or journalistic universe. Unlike other works on the topic, this book analyzes the events through the lenses of both Ottoman and Armenian history and with an interdisciplinary approach. The book is based on extensive research carried out in the past decade, consulting more than fifteen archives and primary sources in a dozen languages.

... the book suggests that scholars should examine how and why a rationalized society suddenly erupts at a particular juncture in history to produce massacres.

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

BDM: Through a consideration of the Adana massacres in micro-historical detail, I offer a macro-cosmic understanding of ethnic violence in the Middle East and beyond. Events such as the Adana massacres do not occur sui generis; they are caused by a range of complex, intersecting factors that are deeply rooted in the shifting local and national ground of political and socioeconomic life. The book does not privilege one factor over another in explaining these massacres. The most important factors leading to the Adana massacres were the Young Turk revolution of 1908, discussed in my first book, which shook the foundations of the “fragile equilibrium” that had existed in the empire for decades; the emergence of resilient public spheres after three decades of despotic rule in which the public sphere was largely repressed; and the counter-revolution of 13 April 1909. 

The book refutes the claim that certain cultures and religions are predisposed to violence—an idea that was and remains prevalent in the way some Western scholars and orientalists view Islam. The literature on genocide and massacres in recent decades has demonstrated that, in particular circumstances, ordinary men and women from many different religious and cultural backgrounds are capable of barbaric crimes. Instead of perpetuating the idea that certain human beings have a biological predisposition to commit crimes, the book suggests that scholars should examine how and why a rationalized society suddenly erupts at a particular juncture in history to produce massacres. 

The dichotomy of Muslims versus Armenians encourages vast essentializations of the parties involved in the conflict and obfuscates a sound analysis of the socioeconomic and political factors that led to the massacres. By analyzing the changes in the sociopolitical, religious, and economic structures in the region, this book provides multi-causal and multi-faceted explanations of the events that unfolded in Adana. The book examines the violence and struggles for power in terms of failures and successes in the public sphere and more generally in relation to the 1908 revolution, using primary sources in a dozen languages. The Adana massacres are considered not as part of a continuum of Armenian massacres leading to the Armenian Genocide but as an outgrowth of the ethno-religious violence that was inflicted on the region in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While much work has been done on understanding ethnic violence in the Ottoman Balkans and the Arab Middle East prior to World War I, there is a lacuna in such studies in the region of Anatolia. This project aims to fill this gap. This book analyzes the history of the massacres through four interrelated themes: dominant and subaltern public spheres, rumors, emotions, and humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention. 

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

BDM: This book is part of a trilogy that I have been working on. In my first book, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the End of the Ottoman Empire, I analyzed the ambiguities and contradictions of the 1908 Young Turk revolution’s goals and the reluctance of both the leaders of the revolution and the majority of the empire’s ethnic groups to come to a compromise regarding the new political framework of the empire. This was done by concentrating on three diversified groups (Armenians, Arabs, and Jews) representing vast geographic areas, as well as a wide range of interest groups, religions, classes, political parties, and factions. The book demonstrated how the revolution with its contradictions and ambiguities led to a substantial upsurge in inter- and intra-ethnic tensions in the Empire, culminating in the counter-revolution of 13 April 1909 and leading to drastic upheaval in the capital and a spiral of violence in the provinces. The Horrors of Adana starts when the Shattered Dreams of Revolution ends by concentrating on the most horrendous event that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. By focusing on the provinces of Adana and Aleppo, the book examined the impact of the revolution on these provinces and demonstrated the factors and the reasons for the deterioration of the conditions leading to the massacres. There is no doubt that the revolution of 1908 opened a Pandora’s box of simmering political and socioeconomic tensions in the Empire. The post-revolutionary period demonstrated how the level of ethno-religious tensions in the empire was so high by the beginning of the twentieth century that any crisis, whether due to internal or external factors, had the potential to explode in a cataclysmic spiral of violence. 

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

BDM: I hope that the book will attract students and scholars from a variety of disciplines that includes but is not limited to students and scholars of Turkish/Ottoman and Middle East studies, and scholars and students working on genocide, violence, massacres, and ethnic conflict. Due to its interdisciplinary approach, the book would also be of interest to the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology. One of the important goals of the book was to emphasize the necessity of understanding the history of this grim page in history going beyond essentialization and dichotomies by showing the complexities of the political and socioeconomic transformations and their impact on shaping the region of Adana. The book, with its inter-disciplinary and global approach, would be a useful addition to the vast literature on ethno-religious conflict, massacres, genocide, and ethnic conflict. The crimes perpetrated in the past century have revealed that no society in the world today is immune to mass violence. To prevent these types of violent episodes, it is crucial that we learn from the past.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

BDM: Currently I am working on the last volume of the trilogy on the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). This study will examine the reaction of non-dominant groups to the wars as well as the attitude of the Ottoman governments towards them. In addition to this, a new edited volume of mine, Denial of Genocide in the 21st Century, will be published next year by the University of Nebraska Press.

J: How do you view the position of Armenian studies in the larger context of Middle Eastern and Turkish/Ottoman studies?

BDM: For decades Armenian studies has been marginalized in Middle Eastern, Turkish, and Ottoman studies due to political and ideological reasons. Ignorance and reluctance to understand the field too have contributed to this marginalization. Some scholars viewed the field as an archaic one remote from the two above mentioned fields. Others did not want to be associated with Armenian studies due to the Armenian Genocide, as they were concerned that any such association might endanger their access to the Ottoman archives or be tainted as advocating an Armenian “point of view.” However, in the recent two to three decades the situation has begun to improve. We are seeing more young scholars start examining the history of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Although the concentration is on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this should be considered a welcome step. Armenians of the Ottoman Empire—representing diverse, complex, and stratified groups—have left a plethora of primary sources pertaining not only to the history of their own groups, rather about the history of the Ottoman Empire in general. Hence, it is time that Western Armenian be considered as one of the key languages in Ottoman and Middle Eastern studies. In addition, it is also high time that we consider these subjects as overlapping and intersecting fields and not as “area studies.” Similar to hybridity of identities, I would like also to promote here the idea that these “area studies” are hybrid and cannot and should not be studied in isolation. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pp. 1-5)

Excerpted from The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century, by Bedross Der Matossian, published by Stanford University Press, ©2022 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All Rights Reserved. 

On the night of Thursday, September 19, 2019, Turkish locals in the Seyhan District of Adana Province attacked and looted shops belonging to Syrian refugees in response to rumors that a Syrian man had tried to rape a Turkish boy. The rumor had spread very quickly on social media. The mob yelled, “Down with Syria, damn Syria!” The police later caught the suspect, who according to the Adana governor’s office, was a fifteen- year-old Turkish citizen with thirty-seven past criminal offences. The police detained 138 subjects for causing extensive damage to Syrian businesses, or instigating such acts on social media, and contained the situation. This was not the first time that Syrian businesses were targeted in Turkey; for example, in July of the same year, dozens of Syrian shops were looted by an angry mob over rumors that a Syrian boy had verbally abused a Turkish girl. With the arrival of 3.5 million refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, intercommunal tensions in Turkey have been high.

Such violent outbursts are not solely the result of rumors; they represent underlying political and socioeconomic anxieties. Furthermore, they are endemic in more than just one society, religion, culture, or geographical region. In the course of history, similar acts of violence have taken place— in the form of blood libels, riots, pogroms, massacres, or, in extreme cases, genocides—in different parts of the globe. From the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572) to the pogroms of Odessa (1905) and from the Sabra and Shatila massacre (1982) to the Gujarat massacres (2002), history is rife with such violent episodes. These acts of violence share similar societal stressors that become heightened due to major political or economic crises or upheavals. The outcome of these stressors is conditioned by local exigencies. The factors leading to the escalation of these tensions include, but are not limited to, competition over resources, xenophobia, wars, nationalism, influxes of refugees, land disputes, economic envy, and the proliferation of rumors. Specific events—minor or major, fabricated or true—can then become catalysts that mobilize dominant groups against vulnerable minorities.

More than one hundred years ago, the province of Adana, in the southern section of the Ottoman Empire and of present-day Turkey, witnessed a major wave of violence that took the lives of thousands of people. More than twenty thousand Christians (predominantly Armenian, as well as some Greek, Syriacs, and Chaldeans) were massacred by Muslims, and around two thousand Muslims were killed by Christians. Starting from the premise that no such horrendous act happens in a vacuum, the aim of this book is to understand the full complexity of these massacres. However, I would like to stress at the outset that this is not a definitive history of the massacres. The enormity and the complexity of crimes such as massacres and genocides make it impossible to write a definitive history; any scholar who claims to do so would do no justice to history. Each village, town, and district that was struck by the massacres could itself be the topic of a monograph. Hence, this book attempts instead to interpret these events through a thorough analysis of the primary sources pertaining to the local, central, and international actors who were involved in the massacres as perpetrators, victims, or bystanders. Unlike other works on the topic, this book analyzes the event through the lenses of both Ottoman and Armenian history and with an interdisciplinary approach. As Jacques Sémelin argues in his seminal work Purify and Destroy, “‘massacre’ as a phenomenon in itself is so complex that it requires a multidisciplinary examination: from the standpoint of not only the historian but also the psychologist, the anthropologist and so on.”

Adana, located on the Mediterranean coast in southern Anatolia, was one of the most significant economic centers in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. With a diverse population of Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Circassians, and Arabs) and Christians (Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs, Chaldians, and Arabs) and a large population of seasonal migrant workers, it was the hub of cotton production in the Ottoman Empire. At the end of April 1909, in a period of two weeks, brutal massacres shook the province of Adana and its capital, the city of Adana. Images of Adana after the massacres show unprecedented physical destruction of a once prosperous city. Local Armenian businesses, churches, residences, and living quarters were totally destroyed. The violence that began in the city of Adana soon spread across the province and poured beyond its borders eastward into the province of Aleppo. In terms of the number of victims, this was the third-largest act of violence perpetrated at the beginning of the twentieth century, following only the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) and the genocide of the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1907 in the German colony of Southwest Africa. The central Ottoman government immediately sent investigation commissions and established courts-martial to try the perpetrators of the massacres. However, these courts failed to prosecute the main culprits of the massacres— a miscarriage of justice that would have repercussions in the years to come. 

Despite the massive bloodshed of the Adana massacres, most of the major books on late Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history fail even to mention these events. Where the massacres are considered in the historiography, the contested nature of the events has led to competing narratives. While the Armenian historiography broadly argues that these massacres resulted from a deliberate policy orchestrated by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the leading Young Turk party, Turkish historiography generally claims that these events were the result of a well-planned Armenian uprising intended to reestablish the Kingdom of Cilicia. Many Armenian and European historians have agreed that the Adana massacres represent a “dress rehearsal” for the Armenian Genocide (1915–23). The prominent historian Raymond H. Kévorkian, in his monumental volume on the Armenian Genocide, discusses the background of the Adana massacres and, based on circumstantial evidence, incriminates the CUP. He concludes by saying:

Who gave the order? Who told high-ranking civilian and military officials, as well as the local notables, to organize these “spontaneous riots”? Was it the authorities, the state, the government, the CUP? Everything suggests that it was only the sole institution that controlled the army, the government, and the main state organs—namely, the Ittihadist Central Committee—that could have issued these orders and made sure that they were respected. In view of the usual practices of this party, the orders must have been communicated, in the first instance, by means of the famous itinerant delegates sent out by Salonika, whom no vali would have dared contradict.

Kévorkian’s assessment of the massacres takes into consideration the viewpoint of the Armenian intelligentsia at the time. Many Armenian scholars adhere to his approach. This consensus notwithstanding, it is important to keep in mind that Armenians were not passive objects who lacked agency; on the contrary, they were active subjects in their own history, a perspective that is usually sidelined in the Armenian Genocide historiography.

With this book, I offer a necessary corrective to these narratives. Through a consideration of the Adana massacres in micro-historical detail, I also offer a macrocosmic understanding of ethnic violence in the Middle East and beyond. Outbreaks like the Adana massacres do not occur sui generis; they are caused by a range of complex, intersecting factors that are deeply rooted in the shifting local and national ground of political and socioeconomic life. In addition, I do not intend to privilege one factor over another in explaining these massacres. The most important factors leading to the Adana massacres were the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which shook the foundations of the “fragile equilibrium” that had existed in the empire for decades; the emergence of resilient public spheres after three decades of despotic rule in which the public sphere was largely repressed; and the counterrevolution of April 13, 1909. The contestation of the legitimacy of the state’s power during the counterrevolution resulted in intense social violence that fed directly into the massacres. A major question that this book strives to answer is how and why public spheres in postrevolutionary periods become spaces in which underlying tensions surface dramatically, creating fear and anxiety about the future that manifests in violence.

Official narratives often attempt to explain such events as manifestations of “ancient hatreds.” They argue that these “ancient hatreds” manifest themselves in times of crisis when political or socioeconomic tensions ignite. In the case of the Middle East, rudimentary explanations of conflicts hinge on tropes such as sectarianism, Muslim-Christian conflict, or the clash of nationalisms. Such dull “explanations” only serve to perpetuate what authorities would like to hear. A question that every historian of this region should ask is, if “ancient hatreds” were the reasons behind conflicts and massacres, why did these episodes of violence begin in the nineteenth century? It is only in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the wake of internal and external transformations, that we see ethno-religious or “sectarian” violence manifest itself in the Ottoman territories. Hence, the “ancient hatreds” approach— as in the case of Yugoslavia—does not hold water in the case of the Ottoman Empire or the modern Middle East.

Furthermore, this book refutes the claim that certain cultures and religions are predisposed to violence—an idea that was and remains prevalent in the way some Western scholars and Orientalists view Islam. Even a prominent scholar of the Armenian Genocide did not shy away from certain Orientalist tropes in explaining the Armenian Genocide. The literature on genocide and massacres in recent decades has demonstrated that, in particular circumstances, ordinary men and women from many different religious and cultural backgrounds are capable of barbaric crimes.11 Instead of perpetuating the idea that certain human beings have a biological predisposition to commit crimes, I suggest that scholars should examine how and why a rationalized society suddenly erupts at a particular juncture in history to produce massacres. Having said that, it is important to highlight that scholars should be cautious about normalizing violence as an inevitable process in such cases.

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.