Marc Owen Jones, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (New Texts Out Now)

Marc Owen Jones, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (New Texts Out Now)

Marc Owen Jones, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (New Texts Out Now)

By : Marc Owen Jones

Marc Owen Jones, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2022).

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

Marc Owen Jones (MOJ): In many ways my new book was a natural progression from my previous monograph, Political Repression in Bahrain. Political repression is all about how hegemonic forces attempt to weaken or destroy social movements and opposition, and a key aspect of political repression that I defined in my book on Bahrain was information controls. Information controls are the use of media, surveillance, and other means of shaping the information space to weaken resistance to a particular entity. They aim to persuade, convince, or deceive opposition forces, and give the differential power of knowledge to the hegemonic order. Digital authoritarianism is the use of digital technology within transnational authoritarian structures, that manifests itself through digital repression.

... the Middle East, while often overlooked in disinformation literature, should be seen as a key exporter of disinformation.

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

MOJ: The book is highly empirical, and documents in detail a number of the many investigations I have undertaken into fake news and disinformation campaigns across the Middle East. It draws on literature around disinformation and propaganda, but also authoritarianism and neoliberalism. It makes several arguments but key among them is that the Middle East, while often overlooked in disinformation literature, should be seen as a key exporter of disinformation. The Gulf in particular, I argue, is going through a “post-truth” moment. Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran, the Gulf Crisis, the rise of Muhammad bin Salman, all prompted social and political changes that necessitated and/or have been accompanied by the need for persuasion campaigns. Indeed, such influence campaigns are a key part of big political decisions, such as conflicts or large shifts in foreign or domestic policy—all of which have occurred in the past ten years.

I also argue that as a result, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deception superpowers, i.e., they have the technology and will to launch influence operations on three fronts—domestically, regionally, and internationally—in a sustained and evolving manner. I also suggest the trajectory of digital authoritarianism, coupled with the emerging sultanism of Mohammed bin Zayed and Muhammad bin Salman, is turning the region away from authoritarianism, and more towards tyranny. Indeed, digital technology can fundamentally shape the nature by which we might define regime type, as it allows hitherto impossible access to people’s private lives. I also argue these regimes, in collaboration with Western public relations and tech companies, are forming disinformation supply chains and authoritarian synergies. Indeed, digital technology helps despatialize authoritarianism, and Gulf countries are increasingly deploying these assets beyond the Middle East, to the West, and beyond. 

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

MOJ: Digital Authoritarianism is simply a more specific focus on this aspect of repression. Studying Bahrain at the time of the 2011 uprising revealed the emerging role of social media and digital technology in state control strategies. At a time when people were asking whether the internet and social media would offer a path to democratization, I was studying how it was being deployed as a tool of control and censorship. My latest book takes this idea further, and while the theoretical framing of information controls is narrower than political repression, the case study is broader, covering numerous countries in the Middle East and across the globe, instead of just Bahrain. So, it is theoretically more focused, and regionally broader.

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

MOJ: I would like the book to be read by anyone working on the Middle East, especially the Gulf—whether they are policy makers, academics, activists, politicians, or diplomats. Perhaps this is what everyone says, but I have written it (I hope) to be engaging and relatively easy to read for non-specialist audiences. In doing that I wanted to impress on people the urgency and importance of the dangers of new digital technology, and how so much of the manipulation is unseen until made visible. The book goes to the core of the reliability of data increasingly used by social science researchers and policy makers. In short, anyone who wants to try to learn about the region needs to learn about the limitations of digital data, and the dangers it poses—I hope this book can do that. I also think it is important for digital scholars the world over, as a clear problem I highlight is the transnational nature of digital repression, and the multiple actors involved.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MOJ: I am currently trying to consider comparative examples of digital repression, and whether we can delineate different digital authoritarian ecosystems. I am also continuing my ongoing work of trying to do first-responding to disinformation campaigns, especially when it concerns digital misogyny or online harmful speech. I am also working on tracking and mapping out anti-Palestinian harmful speech in Arabic. This is a problem I see getting worse now with the normalization of some Arab states’ relationships with Israel.

J: Where do state and transnational forces intersect in digital authoritarianism, and how have we moved away from the idea that digital technology would enable a more vibrant public sphere? 

MOJ: This is a large question, but the underlying argument is that social media use very much reflects the confluence of local political factors, along with the idea of “neoliberation technology.” Here “neoliberation technology” is my ironic take on “liberation technology,” the misguided idea that technology will liberate people from authoritarianism. The discourse of liberation technology is reminiscent of the civilizing mission discourse that technology will “solve” problems and bring democracy, and thus its proliferation is a utilitarian force. In fact, these companies, like many other companies, are profit-orientated, and they do not desire barriers to selling their product. Thus, authoritarians and tech companies both share a key thing in common, a desire to know more and more about their populations. For big tech, it must sell this data to advertisers; for authoritarians, it is to better control the populations. This confluence of neoliberalism and “liberation” discourses is the basis of neoliberalism technology, the normalization of technology into our lives that benefits the increasing destruction of our private spheres, and thus increasing potential for authoritarianism or exploitation of citizens. This transnational collaboration forms the basis for the despatialization of digital authoritarianism.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Preface, pp.xiii to pp.xvi)

Liliane Khalil had everything. She was young, intelligent, and her career as a journalist was blossoming. It was 2011 and Khalil was writing about the Arab Uprisings. Wearing a pair of her favourite Jimmy Choos, Liliane stepped out with members of the British consulate in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a warm spring night and a huge moment for her: a gala celebration at the Hilton Hotel to celebrate the launch of the Atlanta bureau of the Bahrain Independent, a blossoming news organisation. Khalil, an up-and-coming journalist, would be heading the bureau. Quite an achievement at such a young age. She already had thousands of followers on Twitter, including many well-known journalists, politicians and academics.

Despite her short career, Khalil had already interviewed some very prominent names in the Arab world, such as Hanan Ashrawi and the king of Bahrain. She had been a guest speaker at New York University, Oglethorpe University, and had written for a number of international news outlets. Sometimes she’d work late at her various gigs, pausing only to fulfil the new obligation of our digital age, stopping to take a photo to post on social media, in this case, a photo of the CNN logo and posting it on Twitter. Her fame had come in large part off the back of the Arab Uprisings, but she was doing an important job keeping people informed of what was going on. 

Khalil was also riding the wave of techno-utopianism. With people touting Facebook and Twitter as liberating platforms, it was great to see a young woman from the region able to make a name for herself through brave and outspoken journalism. Khalil was modest and humble too, writing for the big outlets such as TRT, but also emerging and little-known platforms such as BikyaMasr, a new Egyptian blog. Her job was dangerous too. After writing about an event in Libya, her Twitter account briefly disappeared – it had been hacked. Khalil re-emerged online again a few days later. She was OK, much to the relief of her followers, who included other well- known journalists, pundits and commentators.

Despite all this, one question lingered. Why would such an up- and-coming journalist take a relatively humble job at a small, new Bahraini outlet? But in the Gulf, with heavyweights like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya emerging from Qatar and Saudi, maybe it was Bahrain’s turn to contribute to the Gulf media renaissance. Yet just as Khalil’s career was reaching new heights, things began to fall apart. I started asking questions. Sure Liliane Khalil was a rising star, still early in her career, but why was there so little evidence of her interviews with many of these famous figures? I could not find her interview with the king of Bahrain, or Ashrawi, or others. Other things did not add up. Why had Liliane Khalil, a journalist who appeared to be supporting the Arab Uprisings, backed the Bahraini regime? Why had she written a piece that promoted the propaganda issued by the Bahraini state, namely that the uprising wasn’t a democratic revolution, but a religious movement inspired by Iran? Why had a Dutch academic, Katje Niethammer, taken issue with Liliane Khalil’s misrepresentation of her work? Was Liliane being paid by the Bahrain government? Had she sold out, and taken a lucrative salary in exchange for journalistic integrity?

Perhaps contacting those who knew Liliane would be useful, maybe her colleagues at the Bahrain Independent. They did not respond to my emails, and appeared mostly to be preoccupied with smearing activists criticising the Bahraini response to the uprising. I contacted the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta to ask about the gala night, where she had photographed herself side by side with women from the British consulate. They said there was no such event. I contacted the British consulate in Atlanta to ask if the staff photographed in Liliane’s photo were available for comment or interview. They denied that the women in the photo even worked at the consulate. Oglethorpe and NYU had no records of Liliane Khalil ever having given a talk. Other things began to unravel. A quick scan of some of the articles Khalil had posted showed they had been plagiarised. One article she had written for the Turkish site Sabah was actually copy- pasted from Reuters. 

The story got weirder. One of the images used by Liliane Khalil directed to the LinkedIn profile of a woman called Gisele Cohen. There were more too, other accounts using her photo and biography led to profiles called Lily Khalil, Victoria Nasr, Gisele Mizrahi, Gisele Azari and Gisele Khadouri – a veritable rabbit hole of slightly altered identities featuring the same photos. I compiled all these bizarre findings into a document and posted it online. Soon it went viral. Al Jazeera did an interview with me, as did France24. The Washington Post wrote an article on it. Soon media outlets were clambering to get an interview with the elusive Liliane Khalil. The only condition they placed was that she appear on camera. After all, one of the central questions was, is Liliane Khalil who she says she is, the attractive young woman in the photos? Liliane agreed to be interviewed onscreen on a number of occasions but always pulled out at the last minute.

After lashing out numerous times, and getting a publicist who also worked for a company doing PR for the Bahraini regime, Liliane agreed to a phone interview with me. The woman on the phone sounded older than the woman in the photo, and began her interview with a sob story, no doubt designed to elicit sympathy. She often attributed things to poor memory. In one instance I asked her about the time she had copied and pasted a Reuters article and claimed it as her own, but she said she was drunk and didn’t remember. It became clear that Khalil was a fraud, but a fraud who had duped a few thousand people into following her. What’s more, a fraud who had made grandiose claims, seemingly without anyone bothering to verify them.

Liliane Khalil was neither the first nor last fraudster to remind people, especially journalists, to be vigilant; but she was a new breed, exploiting digital media and regional conflict to spread pro-government propaganda. Many people put too much trust in social media, and do little to verify the veracity of what they consume. At the same time as Liliane Khalil, the world had been transfixed by a similar scandal. A gay Syrian-American who had been blogging from Damascus called Amina Amaraf suddenly disappeared, prompting fears that the Syrian regime had arrested her. This provoked a real-life manhunt, and journalists and activists raised alarm bells about her fate. However, it turned out Amina was a man called Tom McMaster, an American postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Techno-utopianism bought with it the notion of techno-naivety. The euphoria and hope engendered by the Arab Uprisings had often made people forget that technology was not just the tool of the protester or the revolutionary. It was also the tool of the propagandist, the fraudster and the state. It could be used for good or ill. Social media, a highly unregulated and easy to manipulate space, was ripe for such impostors. This book is not an epitaph for the demise of techno-utopianism, or liberation technology, but rather a reminder that hope requires vigilance and not complacency, and that power accumulates as nodes within networks. It is also a critique of the liberation paradigm, which served as political cover for neoliberal capital, which has sought to emphasise the internet and its spread as a means of creating new untapped frontiers for investment.

With the rise of any new technology, unbounded optimism can serve to leave us off guard, blind to the insidious encroachment of malicious actors seeking to reaffirm or maintain control over a digital space that could, in a theoretically possible but likely unattainable context, offer us so much good. However, as the book shows, since the demise of Liliane Khalil, the rise of post-truth politics and deception have shown no sign of abating. It is unclear if we are becoming better at exposing manipulation, or if manipulation is getting worse, but the confluence of a breed of new populists, along with a disinformation industry facilitated by loosely regulated social media companies, is sustaining digital authoritarianism and illiberal practices in both the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and across the globe. It is the hope of this book to shed light on the causes, nature and impact of this weaponised deception.

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.