Ashjan Ajour, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body (New Texts Out Now)

Ashjan Ajour, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body (New Texts Out Now)

Ashjan Ajour, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body (New Texts Out Now)

By : Ashjan Ajour أشجان عجور

Ashjan AjourReclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2021).

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

Ashjan Ajour (AA): The political reality of life in Palestine drove me to engage in this book. I witnessed the hunger strike and participated in solidarity with the prisoners’ cause before starting my research in 2014. I wanted to understand the revolutionary transformation that led the Palestinian prisoners to this action and investigate the meanings the former hunger strikers give to their emancipatory resistance. Also, the absence of academic studies on this contemporary phenomenon compelled me to research a neglected but critical aspect of the politics of resistance in Palestine. There is a lack of academic studies on Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons. There are some limited narrative accounts in Arabic about the collective hunger strikes over the history of prisoners’ movement, but I have not found any academic study devoted to investigating the lived experience of hunger strikers. I therefore decided to focus on hunger strikes, particularly given their prominence as a current form of resistance in Palestine.

...the hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent “technologies of the self” to challenge and transcend the colonial power.

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

AA: Reclaiming Humanity is centred on the dispossession of humanity in Israeli prisons and the hunger strike as a process of reclamation. It seeks to articulate the hunger striker’s own philosophy of freedom and the weaponization of their bodies. The book provides narrative and analytical insights into embodied resistance in the face of the colonial machine, showing the intensity of resistance where the prisoners transform their bodies into a weapon. It argues that the hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent “technologies of the self” to challenge and transcend the colonial power. Reclaiming Humanity illuminates the process of weaponization of the body and how the hunger strikers transformed themselves from a “passive” subject into a “resistant” subject, where the collapse of the body is experienced as generating a kind of spiritual strength. It sheds lights on the singularity of the participants’ view of the hunger strike as moving beyond the political into “spiritualization” of struggle. 

Settler colonialism is a central paradigm to understand the experience of Palestinian dispossession in Israeli prisons. The discourse of scarifying the body can only be understood in relation to the way in which Zionist settler colonialism aims at the elimination of Palestinian existence, both material and immaterial. The book situates the hunger strike experience in the historical frame of colonised Palestine and in relation to the larger context of the Palestinian struggle and draws a detailed picture of the contemporary Palestinian reality from the vantage point of the hunger strike. Through an engagement with individuals’ experiences of hunger strike, the reader learns about significant aspects of Palestinian society and politics, situating these individuals in a collective historical context, revealing important facets of Palestinian life, and foregrounding the nature and transformation of collective subjectivity.

The methodology draws on qualitative phenomenological research methods as well as sociological approaches to “storytelling” to do justice to the complexity of the hunger strikers’ lived experience. In doing so, I draw upon feminist and decolonizing authors who developed critical approaches to the research process. I extended the methodological framework to include the heart and intimacy and developed what I called “language of the heart.” 

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

AA: My academic background and interest in the question of subjectivity and resistance led me to this book. My first book, which began as an MA dissertation entitled “Representations of Power and Knowledge in the Discourse of Liberal Women’s Organizations,” focuses on the transformation of Palestinian resistance in the post-Oslo period from a feminist perspective. However, the Oslo moment produced a discourse which did not emanate an emancipatory politics and rather begs the question of what alternative emancipatory political discourses and practices can challenge the dominant liberal discourse. I originally wanted to investigate the revolutionary practices and discourses of Palestinian “resistance fighters,” “political hunger strikers,” and “martyrdom operators,” to examine how they operate as empirical instances of anti-colonial resistance, in order to explicate the dynamics of colonial power and anti-colonial counter-power. However, I soon realized that each form of resistance would require a separate treatment to allow detailed analysis.

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

AA: I hope the book will be read by students, academics, and activists working on prisoners’ rights who would appreciate the book’s insights on Palestinian political prisoners’ resistance. I believe the book has a great potential to attract an audience beyond academia, such as journalists, political activists, and people generally interested in settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance. I think the book appeals not only to academics who work on Middle East and Palestinian studies but also to a wider field of political subjectivity, body and embodiment, incarceration, colonialism, anti-colonial resistance, and self-determination. Moreover, given that this interdisciplinary study cuts across several fields, I hope the book will be of great interest to scholars in interdisciplinary methodologies, feminist ethnography, and decolonization.

I hope that the book will contribute to the impact of Palestine scholarship that ties into the literature of anti-colonial resistance in colonised Palestine by developing an in-depth account of the experience of the Palestinian hunger strikes and to disseminate knowledge on the way in which the Palestinian prisoners challenge the Israeli Prison Authorities’ (IPA) technologies of power and how they experienced and responded to the processes of dispossession exercised on their bodies. The main objective of the book is to contribute to the study of the Palestinian struggle and give voice to the discourse of the hunger strikers and their philosophy of freedom and self-determination. It seeks to articulate the hunger strikers’ own philosophy of freedom and the weaponization of their bodies as a mean of reclaiming dignity and humanity. The interviewed hunger strikers felt that the research is bearing witness to their suffering, and this was a key reason for them agreeing to be interviewed. Their expectation of the book was that their voices and stories will be heard to expose Israeli practices. They think that their counter-narrative has been silenced and misrepresented. As one of the interviewees put it: “Israeli propaganda made us terrorists, racists, and suicidal, and through our stories we want to show who the terrorist is.”

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AA: Drawing on a decolonial feminist lens I am working now to expand the gendered focus of the book to address the gendered methods of oppressive techniques and torture that the IPA use against Palestinian women detainees, and in particular the manner in which the IPA use techniques of gendered violence. I focus on women’s political agency and the reconstruction of the gendered body and sexuality. I examine modes of gendered emancipation and transformation. 

J: Can you speak about your positionality as Palestinian and what challenges you faced in completing this work? How did you navigate the structural, personal, or other hurdles that might have otherwise compromised your ability to complete the research or writing process?

AA: I am a Palestinian with a commitment to the politics of resistance and decolonization and I engaged in this research and wrote from a position of an embodied researcher in the space of settler colonialism. I said in my book that despite my background as a Palestinian and awareness of the nature of repression we live under occupation, but I did not anticipate the level of violence and human suffering in Israeli prisons. I was confronted by things that disturbed me deeply. I have witnessed pain, heartbreak, and the complexity of extensive resilience. The hunger strikers’ stories are rich and complex and required resilience. The work on this book was hard and emotionally exhausting for both me and them because it originates in the painful stories of Palestinian hunger strikers and from long hours of listening to their accounts and interpretations of their experience. These interviews occurred a short time after the release of hunger strikers from Israeli prisons. I was part of their families’ pain and heartbreak and I met with their loved ones while some of strikes were ongoing. 

The other challenge has been the writing process, as the empirical data is very rich and complex and required resilience to make sense of it. I experienced difficulty in writing up the transcriptions of the interviews. I did not follow up the suggestion to seek counselling in order to deal with the emotional aspect of my work, as I do not see my pain as an individual pain, but rather as connected to the pain of all Palestinians, a collective pain. I needed to address it through writing because it is part of the research process. To deal with this challenge, I tried to articulate some of my research interviews in a free writing semi-fictional form in parallel to my academic work, in an attempt to produce a piece of research that is genuine and faithful to people’s suffering. I also had some challenges related to access and mobility. Many Palestinians are denied access to study abroad and I experienced difficulty in returning to the United Kingdom after my field research in 2017.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction)

Illumination…

A prison is a house of love, a house of wild desires and mindless jealousies. There passions are comparable in their intensity only to an impassioned devotion to an idea. Although the political criminal imprisoned for an idea, like the common criminal suffers and burns because of sensual deprivation, he burns from his idea as well. Yet the political prisoner has an advantage, however, doubly inflamed. While burning for or in an idea neither banishes nor mitigates other passions, it certainly outshines and outranks them. The political inmate is master of himself to the degree that he is devoted to his idea body and soul. (Milovan Djilas, cited in Segel, 2012: 133)

The above quote from the Yugoslav socialist partisan and dissident Milovan Djilas, with its metaphor of 'burning for an idea', is echoed in former hunger striker Hasan Safadi's testimony of his experience as a Palestinian prisoner: 

Our resistance embodies our humanity… [which] lies in the idea of sacrifice for freedom. It is like the candle that burns and consumes itself for others… It lights the way for the other including you, you write this research so that you can see the road … For us this is our humanity, to sacrifice for the other. Those who have gone away [the martyrs] did not take anything with them but they just sacrifice the self for the other. 

But the exceptional act of hunger striking is revealed, through the interviews, as being more complex than simply an act of self-sacrifice for an idea of liberation. The hunger strikers’ discourse around the sacrifice of the body is constructed in relation to the way in which Israeli settler colonialism aims at the elimination of Palestinian existence and this book considers the human suffering and predicament of Palestinian political prisoners in the context of their agency over their body and how they understand it as a worthwhile cost for gaining freedom. It reveals both the potential and the limitations of hunger strike resistance in the context of colonised Palestine and sheds light on the participants’ own interpretation of their actions and the meaning they accord to them.      

The Palestinian hunger strikers are motivated by the desire for the rebirth of a confiscated life. This mode of resistance is a sort of ‘return to life’ in a revolutionary praxis where prisoners turn their bodies into weapons against the violence inflicted by Israelis on both their bodies and their souls. They creatively explore new forms of subjectivity – new modes of living and thinking. They are not simply the product of a colonial power, but rather constitute themselves through a creative transformation that emphasises the agency of the self in its refusal of the imposition of victimhood. 

Mazan Natcheh, one of the interviewed hunger strikers, draws an analogy between the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, who self-immolated in 2011, and the Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons. 

Do you think it is logical that a human burns their body? Why do you think Bouazizi burned himself? Is it reasonable that a man burns his body? Because the pressure is great. He would not have burnt himself unless he felt that the pressure was more than his capacity. He found that burning is easier, burning the self was easier than the reality he lived. Let’s make a projection to Palestinian contexts. If we apply this to our reality, we find the hunger strike easier than the reality we live in.

However, a major difference between Bouazizi and the hunger strikers is that the hunger strikers are not aiming at death or suicide, but rather at resisting and putting pressure on the colonial power in order to liberate themselves. They use the only weapon that they have, their bodies. Natcheh declared:

Everyone who reads your research should understand that we don’t love torturing ourselves. We tried many other means. We didn’t reach this point without thought. We boycotted appearing before Israeli courts. We returned our meals in protest. We tried many ways... We even refused to take our medicines when we were sick. When these means did not make any difference, we decided to go on hunger strike.

For them the hunger strike is a death for life. ‘I love life, I did not want to die’ – this sentiment was repeated by most of the former hunger strikers I interviewed. Mohamad al-Kik:

Who said the hunger strike is a rational act? It is not rational at all, but it is produced through irrational conditions. Therefore, the equation is ‘irrational + irrational = rational’ ... something irrational was born due to the irrationality of the occupation practices against us. The Israeli crime led me to undertake the illogical thing. Do you think depriving me of my children and devastating my life and my work (as a journalist) is logical? Therefore, my persistence to go on hunger strike is not logical either. Yes, there is no sense of rationality residing in the idea of martyrdom and self-sacrifice. It is not rational to endanger our bodies (there is a probability to lose some of our organs), or to cause suffering to our families and children either during our starvation or perhaps death (as there is a probability to die). However, the irrationality of my hunger strike became a very rational act because I wanted to emancipate myself and achieve my freedom. Freedom is logic. All revolutions which have happened in the world prove that irrationality becomes something natural for emancipation. 

In the hunger strikers' view, their act is embedded in relation to violence, and the repressive technologies of power inflicted on captive subjects which deprive them of normal life. Mohamad al-Kik again: ‘By violence, they aim to dispossess us of our humanity. But on the contrary this violence creates our humanity… such humanity might take us to death. However, this risk of death maintains our humanity’.

The research participants describe the severe dispossession imposed on them as turning them into 'living dead' in the Israeli prison system. Ahmed Qatamish expressed this as ‘time without time’, to describe the phenomenology of captivity and how it confiscates the duration and future of Palestinian detainees. From the standpoint of the hunger strikers then, their action is an act of restoring humanity. Munir Abu Sharar emphasised the human aspects of political struggle in the hunger strike:

Since the occupation is very inhuman, our response to occupation is very human. We are engaging in a huge human conflict and our humanity necessitates our struggle until the end. The whole experience is human from the moment of my arrest until my hunger strike, and I would even say since the moment of Zionist invasion to our land. We defend the sublime and noble values of our humanity and therefore our struggle is human. 

Some of the research participants argue that they are engaged in a form of revolutionary humanity that emerges from the anti-colonial struggle to expose and uncover Israeli occupation practices, particularly the Israeli propaganda which turns Palestinians into “terrorists”. Al-Kik declared: ‘I wanted to show the whole world who the terrorists and racists are, and how our humanity is exploded at the hand of Israeli’s assault and repression’. He describes the humanity that is reborn out of the ‘inhumanity and racism of colonisation’ by emphasising the inhumanity of the occupation: 

It is normal when we live under these conditions that we quest for our life and humanity, we quest for our subjectivity. When I live under inhuman conditions, I decide to reject dehumanisation. I want to expose the inhumanity of occupation, and by our resistance our humanity is reborn … resisting racism and assault is a form of humanity.

The research participants articulate a form of humanism tied to love and sacrifice. Abu Sharar reported that he captured his humanity in this experience. He links this form of humanity with love for his homeland and political cause. Love is conceived by many hunger strikers as the engine of their resistance. As Ayman Hamdan observed: 

Love is a powerful weapon for humans to use in resistance. If the human being does not love his homeland, it is difficult for him to resist. If we Palestinians don’t love our land, we will not defend it; if we don’t love our families we will not fight for them. I believe in my cause and I am still insisting on defending my land and my cause … love inspires our fighting and patience.

Love is associated by the prisoners with hope. As Abu Sharar declared:

If we don’t aspire to hope we don’t need to torture our self with hunger strike. To maintain a hunger strike you live on hope. All our conflict with occupation is built on the hope to end the occupation and … live in freedom without constraints. Therefore, all our lives are marked with hope. 

The participants’ interpretation of their experience and the meanings they give to their embodied resistance emphasise the human dimension of their anti-colonial struggle which they regard as not only national-political but also universally human in kind. Accordingly, the book is centred on the dispossession of humanity and the hunger strike as a process of reclamation and seeks to articulate the hunger strikers’ own philosophy of freedom and the pivotal role within it of the weaponisation of their bodies. 

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.