Abdullah Al-Arian, ed., Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (New Texts Out Now)

Abdullah Al-Arian, ed., Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (New Texts Out Now)

Abdullah Al-Arian, ed., Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (New Texts Out Now)

By : Abdullah Al-Arian

Abdullah Al-Arian (ed.), Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (UK: Hurst Publishers, 2022).

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

Abdullah Al-Arian (AA): This book is the product of a two-year research initiative supported by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar. The stated aim of the project at the time was “to provide original academic insight on the political, economic, and social dynamics of football within the region.” In other words, this project offered an exciting avenue by which scholars could come together to explore not only how football has impacted the states and societies of the Middle East, but also how the game reflects broader processes at work in the region, from political contestation and popular mobilization to significant shifts in mass consumerism and modes of cultural expression. As a powerful and universal cultural force that has captured the popular imagination, driven state policy, and shaped the relations between nations, football in the Middle East has long been deserving of greater scholarly treatment than it has traditionally received. As a massive football fan myself, working on this volume was an absolute joy, allowing me to learn much from the leading scholars in this budding field and to offer a deeper look into the game we love and its place in the region.

Football has since developed as a significant site of political contestation and the pursuit of economic interests.

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

AA: Naturally, the fact that Qatar was selected to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup has helped to spur scholarly interest in exploring football’s impact in the Middle East (and vice versa). Nonetheless, it is important to note that football has a rich legacy that long predates the recent emergence of wealthy Gulf states as major players that have shaken up the global footballing landscape. 

Historically, the game held a significant place in the colonial experience, played a part in national identity formation, and was cemented as a powerful cultural force with the rise of post-colonial regimes. Football has since developed as a significant site of political contestation and the pursuit of economic interests. The chapters in this volume explore the various elements of football’s heritage and current place across the Middle East. Using the early-twentieth-century formation of the Egyptian league as a case, the opening chapter shows how the development of the game of football was intertwined with broader power politics within Egypt’s governing institutions as they wrested control from colonial rule. Subsequent chapters build upon the theme of football as a site of political contestation, at once examining how states from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates have relied on their footballing interests to legitimize authoritarian rule and in turn how football culture was invoked in the course of popular mobilizations such as the Hirak movement in Algeria.

Football also provides a useful lens by which to examine collective experiences of populations throughout the Middle East. The volume includes chapters that discuss the major obstacles facing women's football in Turkey and the marginalization of Palestinian footballers in Lebanon. Others look at the impact (or lack thereof) of football-themed state, club, and NGO programs in confronting the region’s refugee crisis, as well as football’s place in the BDS movement for Palestinian rights. 

Of course, with the first World Cup to be staged in the Middle East set for later this year, several scholars contributed chapters that speak directly to this momentous event. As the Qatar national team has enjoyed much recent competitive success, one chapter challenges conventional wisdom regarding national identity performance by looking at the multiple layers of identity at work in the Qatar national team. Another author engages the prevailing literature on fan engagement by calling for a new approach to how football fandom is assessed in the context of Gulf states. 

Much of the scrutiny directed toward the 2022 FIFA World Cup has centered on Qatar’s treatment of its migrant labor force, without whom the massive infrastructure projects necessary to host the games would have been impossible. A chapter dedicated to the questions raised by this issue examines both the global campaign for migrant workers’ rights and the Qatari state’s response, with far-reaching implications for labor conditions across the Gulf region well beyond this year’s tournament. Similarly, another chapter chronicles how Qatar’s major investment in football has extended into the realm of broadcast rights, with the state-owned BeIN Sports network emerging as a point of contention during the blockade of Qatar by several of its neighbors beginning in 2017. A Saudi-based pirated channel threatened to upend the regional sports broadcasting landscape during one of the most volatile conflicts in GCC history. On the subject of media, the volume also includes a chapter on how journalistic coverage has shaped narratives surrounding women’s attendance at football matches in Iran. Together, all of the chapters included in this book reflect the belief that football represents a powerful force that has much to tell us about the lived experiences of people in the region.            

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

AA: Much of my prior work has been dedicated to the study of the rise and evolution of Islamic social movements in the Arab region. In fact, one can identify some compelling parallels between the assumptions that animate that work and the growing interest in football’s impact in the Middle East. Once we strip away the essentializing components regarding Islam that hinder so much of the scholarship around Islamic activism, we can begin to see that language, symbols, historical experiences, and other significant markers can form a powerful force around which social movements can coalesce and mobilize. 

Football has certainly offered such a collection of cultural reference points and rallying cries that have been increasingly visible over time, most recently in the prominent participation of football ultras in the Arab uprisings. And like the role of religion in the context of most states, so too have states attempted to instrumentalize their proximity to football in the advancement of regime interests. My chapter in the volume focuses on precisely this phenomenon, contending that “soft power” is insufficient in describing how authoritarian rulers deploy football to prop up their regimes. The similarities are apparently not lost on these states either. After the regime aggressively coopted the Egyptian national team’s appearance at the 2018 World Cup in Russia to legitimize Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s deeply unpopular rule, the head of the Egyptian football association inexplicably blamed Islamists for the team’s disastrous performance in its group stage matches.

Football also presents a number of questions that have been explored in other contexts (including the study of Islam in society), such as the challenge of preserving authenticity in the face of increased commodification, or locating avenues for empowerment and unity where the potential for conflict and division also exists. In fact, studying football in society may have much to tell us about broader political and socioeconomic phenomena. Football as religion is a widely used cliché, but religion as football may have something to it as well.

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

AA: This book speaks to multiple audiences. On the one hand, it pushes forward a subfield within the literature on sports and society in the Middle East, challenging conventional theoretical frameworks and sharing groundbreaking field research that is certain to help shape scholarly discussions on these topics in the years to come. On the other hand, all of the chapter authors have tapped into the passion that makes football the most popular sport in the world, offering fans everywhere a view of the game as it exists in this part of the world. As football fans around the globe set their sights on the first World Cup to come to the region, I hope they will find in this volume a useful guide to the multiplicity of experiences that define the beautiful game in the Middle East.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

AA: I am currently working on a follow-up to my first book that chronicled the revival of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1970s. This second project is far more ambitious in both scope and scale, examining the twentieth-century diffusion of the Muslim Brotherhood mission from its home in Egypt across the Arab region. The book explores the various tensions and congruences between Islamism and nationalism by tracing the localization and nationalization of Islamic activism in six Arab states. My hope is that this book will offer both a corrective to some of the prevailing views regarding the history of Islamism as it relates to nationalism, as well as provide a useful comparative study of the Islamist experience, from Tunisia to Kuwait.

Separately, I am co-leading a new CIRS research initiative on “the global histories and practices of Islamophobia.” The project, which we expect to result in an edited volume, is bringing together specialists to examine the historical roots of anti-Muslim animus in a wide array of geographic contexts and track their manifestations into the contemporary setting. We expect that the comparative element of this project will yield a far deeper understanding of a universal phenomenon that nonetheless has exhibited unique features everywhere it has appeared. With increasingly worrying developments in the United States and Europe, China, Russia, India, and even within the Middle East, we believe that the need to study the roots of Islamophobia is as urgent as ever.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pp. 1-6)

Far and away the most popular sport in the world, football has a special place in the states and societies of the Middle East. The beautiful game has a rich and vibrant history in the region and continues to be the single most unifying cultural force in the realm of sports. Football brings together families as they pass down their support for clubs from one generation to the next. The sport brings cities out in full force to celebrate their local team’s most memorable victories. It mobilizes entire nations beneath the badge of their country on football’s largest stage, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup. Football fandom has also been channeled in the course of popular revolutions, while authoritarian rulers have relied on it to bolster support for their regimes. It has been invoked in the relations between states, both in times of cooperation and in times of conflict. As the brief sketches below demonstrate, the story of football in the Middle East is inseparable from the broader experiences of the region and the destinies of its people. 

Against all odds, the Iraqi national football team defeated the likes of Australia and South Korea to reach the 2007 final match of the Asian Cup, where it would face perennial favorite and three-time winner of the tournament Saudi Arabia. Even under ideal conditions, reaching a first-ever final would be an impressive feat for Iraq, but in this moment, the cup final matchup represented what one writer observed as “the side without a country, against the most well-funded national side in the world.” Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, which followed more than a decade of debilitating economic sanctions, the Iraqi national team had faced perilous conditions that tempered any footballing ambitions the country may have held. In the leadup to the tournament, the team was forced to train in neighboring Jordan to escape the ravages of military occupation and sectarian violence back home. Then, on the eve of the opening group stage match, the team’s physiotherapist was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad while attempting to rejoin the squad.

The Iraq team lifted the cup in Jakarta, following a narrow 1–0 win over Saudi Arabia in the final. The victory, however, had been overshadowed by the news from home, as a series of bombings killed fifty Iraqi fans while they celebrated their team’s semi-final win over South Korea. Subsequent news reports juxtaposed the team’s remarkable achievement with the adversity it faced. The blending of the two produced narratives about the unity displayed “across Iraq’s sectarian divide” and “the healing power of sport.”

Three years later, in 2010, world football’s governing body, FIFA, would declare that it had accepted Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The announcement was at once met with jubilation and incredulity. Qatar would become the smallest country to ever host a World Cup and the first in the Middle East to do so. Buoyed by the country’s natural gas wealth, Qatar’s leaders positioned their nation as a technically advanced site to host a tournament that “created new concepts” and “pushed the boundaries,” while also pledging to be more inclusive than conventional tournaments—“a World Cup for everyone,” according to the chairman of the Qatar bid, Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani. Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the wife of the country’s ruling emir at the time, added, “this is an opportunity to eradicate misconceptions, not just about Qatar, but about the wider Islamic and Arab world.”

Elsewhere, FIFA’s announcement elicited considerable outcry. Critics questioned every facet of the decision, from Qatar’s lack of a strong footballing pedigree, to concerns over climate conditions during the desert country’s intensely hot summer months (in which the games are traditionally played). Others expressed skepticism toward Qatar’s ability to pull off the logistical feat of constructing new stadiums, training facilities, hotels, and a public transit system, among other infrastructure requirements, even with the tournament being twelve years away. Cultural arguments advanced the notion that a Muslim country that limited the sale of alcohol could not possibly host a global event in which alcohol consumption was a central feature of the fan experience. Some even questioned the integrity of the process itself in which “an unlikely nation” was awarded the World Cup, amid allegations of vote-buying and corruption within FIFA. Most of all, however, Qatar would face intense scrutiny over the conditions of its migrant labor force, which formed the backbone of the country’s ability to build the infrastructure vital to the delivery of the games. In light of persistent accusations that it was practicing “modern-day slavery,” Qatar faced intense pressure to reform its labor system to bring it in line with international human rights standards.

Only a few months after Qatar’s successful World Cup bid made headlines, a wave of popular uprisings swept the Middle East and North Africa. As one authoritarian regime after another faced the prospect of being overthrown in favor of a more representative political order, observers shifted their focus to examining the various social movements that mobilized in opposition to deeply entrenched dictatorships. In Egypt, which saw the three-decade rule of Hosni Mubarak upended by an eighteen-day mass protest, the role of football Ultras was noted for defending protesters confronted by state violence. In their storied past, devoted fan groups such as the Al-Ahlawy Ultras (of Al-Ahly Sporting Club) were no strangers to repressive crackdowns. As one member of Al-Ahlawy recounted, “it wasn’t just supporting a team; you were fighting a system and the country as a whole. We were fighting the police, fighting the government, fighting for our rights.” That experience proved valuable when Mubarak sent both police forces and plain-clothed gangs to disperse the protesters at Tahrir Square in Cairo and elsewhere across the country. The Ultras repelled attacks by government forces, protected civilian protesters, and maintained the pressure on the regime that ultimately led to Mubarak’s removal. 

During the transitional period that followed, the Ultras continued to be a fixture at the mass protests objecting to the military’s domination of the political process. Then, following a match at Port Said Stadium in February 2012, seventy-four Al-Ahly supporters were killed in attacks by armed thugs as police stood by and did nothing. The assault was likely premediated—retribution for the Ultras’ anti-regime activism. The massacre was by far the largest instance of violence in Egyptian football history. In the words of one observer, the Port Said tragedy “transformed a football fan club of revolutionaries into a political entity.” The Ultras’ efforts to seek justice for the victims through Egyptian courts were denied. Instead, the government issued a ban on all fans in football stadiums that was only partially lifted in 2018. As for the Ultras, the revived authoritarian regime led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi outlawed all organized fan groups as part of its broader efforts to suppress independent political currents within Egyptian society. 

Football in the Middle East Through the Decades 

In the shadow of these and other developments, it is no surprise that over the course of the past decade, football in the Middle East has emerged as the subject of both impassioned political and cultural expression as well as academic study. Historian Rashid Khalidi identified the problems in defining the “Middle East” as a self-contained unit of analysis, owing to the lack of precision in determining its physical boundaries, the colonial origins of the term, and its continued political uses in the service of neo-imperial interests. He also noted the failure to account for economic, social, and political processes that transcend regional confines, and called upon scholars to seek the connective tissue between phenomena with roots in the region and their manifestations beyond narrowly defined geographies. There are few developments in the modern era that rise to this call more than football, a sport that originated elsewhere, and has captured the imaginations of populations across all continents, but nevertheless developed deep political, cultural, and social roots in the Middle East. The studies presented here reflect an understanding of the region as a porous unit of analysis with processes that can be traced to regions beyond, observed in part through the universality and permeability that football offers. 

This volume aims to build upon the recent surge in interest in football as the leading sport in the Middle East, while also highlighting its longstanding presence as a political and cultural force for over a century. To be sure, the beautiful game has roots in the region that date back to the era of European colonial rule, state- building, and modernization. The introduction of football as a leisure activity and an organized sport was part and parcel of broader efforts by officials to transform colonized subjects into “properly obedient individuals” whose physical conditioning formed an integral part of colonial educational. Local elites internalized discourses on organized sports as a mark of cultural and civilizational advancement. 

Egyptian nationalists believed their country’s participation in the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games represented Egypt’s arrival as a full-fledged member of the global community of nations. In mandate Palestine, organized football matches were alternately used by colonial officials “to pacify the anger of the Arab population who opposed the pro-Zionist British policy,” as well as by Zionist settlers and indigenous Palestinians to assert competing nationalist claims. The establishment of an annual football tournament in the mid-1940s aided the Hashemite monarchy in its consolidation of Jordanian national identity, while in Sudan, college graduates’ assumption of leadership in the national football association represented “an early exercise in mass politics and popular government.”

As scholars have noted, football’s central place in public life across the Middle East and North Africa continued well into the era of anti-colonial revolution and radical politics. As part of its revolutionary struggle against France, the Front de Liberation (FLN) assembled a football team to advocate on behalf of Algerian independence while competing internationally. Upon leading the military’s overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy, Gamal Abdel Nasser went to great lengths to enlist the Egyptian Football Association in mobilizing mass support for the newly established republic, using it to empower the armed forces and legitimize the dominant role it came to play in governance. So too was football considered a liability to more pressing political demands. In the aftermath of Egypt’s defeat in the June 1967 war with Israel, Nasser suspended the Egyptian league, labeling it a “distraction” from the goal of national liberation. Similarly, in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, opponents of the ruling monarch argued that the national obsession with football represented a deliberate attempt by the Pahlavi regime to subdue the population into quiet obedience in the face of government corruption and repression.

By the late 1990s, amid emerging discourses on the impact of globalization on local societies, football was frequently invoked as a device to understand international relations, neoliberal economics, and the homogenization of popular culture. “Football as peacemaking” became a frequent refrain, with the United Nations establishing a series of programs promoting football as a tool for conflict resolution and economic development. More than just another game, the group stage match between the United States and Iran at the 1998 World Cup carried the weight of nearly twenty years of hostile relations between the two states. The drama surrounding the match, which Iran won 2–1, played out in the realm of global public opinion and in conciliatory statements by the heads of state of both nations. Emboldened by the perceived political opening posed by the globalization of football, one prominent writer envisaged a “football revolution” in the Middle East that would displace the forces of political Islam and anti-Americanism. 

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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.

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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.