Max Weiss, Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Baʿthist Syria (New Texts Out Now)

Max Weiss, Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Baʿthist Syria (New Texts Out Now)

Max Weiss, Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Baʿthist Syria (New Texts Out Now)

By : Max Weiss

Max Weiss, Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Baʿthist Syria (Stanford University Press, 2022). 

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

Max Weiss (MW): Revolutions Aesthetic developed out of my interests in the intellectual and cultural history of modern Syria as well as my work as a literary translator. One kernel of the research idea for the book was generated by my reading and translation of Syrian novels. I found that Syrian novelists were taking increasingly greater risks in fiction writing by tackling political questions more and more directly—explicitly characterizing and thematizing the state and its representatives, the security services, and political power in the country more generally—than the scholarly literature seemed to notice. While I first tracked this development in novels published following the death of Hafiz al-Asad in 2000, during the first decade following Bashar’s coming to power, I then began to read more widely—moving back in time and keeping up with the burst of novelistic writing that accompanied the Syrian revolution from 2011—and found that there was an important story here about aesthetics, politics, and cultural production in the making of contemporary Syria that had yet to be told.

As I have also had a longstanding interest in film, I started thinking about the parallels, dissimilarities, and interconnectedness between literature and cinema, which led me to use novels and films as well as literary and cinema periodicals as the foundation for a new kind of cultural and intellectual history. There is still much research to be done on the history of other genres of cultural production during the Asadist period: poetry, short stories, drama, and the plastic arts, just to name the most salient. Nevertheless, novels and feature films fit well together for reasons of form but also inasmuch as novelists and filmmakers have played comparable social and political roles as intellectuals and public figures, making these works and their creators particularly well-suited to the analysis of an intellectual historian. Moreover, given the difficulty that scholars of Syria have faced in conducting archival and other kinds of research inside the country, both before and since the onset of the war, it seemed to me that approaching the cultural history of this period using the tools of intellectual history would be both appropriate and effective.

Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the past fifty years.

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

MW: Revolutions Aesthetic makes the argument that the cultural and intellectual history of contemporary Syria—nominally a Baʿthist regime since 1963 but under the consolidated control of Hafiz al-Asad and his coterie of supporters, especially with the assistance of the Baʿth party, the army, and the security services following the so-called “corrective movement” (al-ḥaraka al-taṣḥīḥiyya) of November 1970—can be understood in terms of a struggle around aesthetic ideology. This is a point that has been implicitly and obliquely touched on by some scholars but had not been adequately historicized, to my mind. In that sense, this book makes some unorthodox methodological moves, bringing together the approaches of literary criticism, film studies, and intellectual history, all with an eye to the big questions typically raised by social scientists who seek to explain the nature of regime formation, political transformation, and authoritarian upgrading.

Revolutions Aesthetic argues that contemporary Syria has been shaped by an underappreciated agonistic struggle around aesthetic ideology, one which pitted different visions of politics, society, and art against one another. State-driven aesthetic ideology—what I call an Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution that relied, at the risk of overgeneralization, on an aesthetics of power—was deployed by regime officials and institutions such as the National Film Organization and the Arab Writers’ Union in the service of a sweeping political and cultural program deployed by the new regime. But the state never fully captured the cultural field and alternative visions of art and politics surfaced through forms I refer to as the aesthetics of resistance and the aesthetics of solidarity. The book reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life by introducing a broad array of novels, films, and cultural periodicals to an Anglophone audience for the first time; it is worth noting that these are works that have not received much attention in any language, including Arabic. I interrogate themes that have been crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the past fifty years. 

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

MW: I was trained as a historian of the modern Middle East and wrote my first book about the legal, institutional, and intellectual dimensions of “sectarianization” within the Lebanese Shiʿi milieu during the first half of the twentieth century, that is, the periods of French Mandate rule and early Lebanese independence. That book was based on Islamic court records, French colonial archival material, and published sources in Arabic, French, and English. From there, my interests shifted towards the history, literature, and culture of modern and contemporary Syria as well as the methods and analytical concerns of intellectual history. I co-edited (with Jens Hanssen) two volumes on modern Arab intellectual history that were produced with an eye to signposting the state of the field while also tracking new approaches that have emerged in order to bring Middle East studies and intellectual history into a more direct and dynamic conversation. At the same time, I was becoming a more active literary translator, publishing a number of Arabic novels and works of nonfiction in English translation, a practice that now plays an integral part in my academic research as well. In other words, my scholarly activities have spread beyond the discipline of history, into the realms of intellectual history, literary criticism, translation, and film studies.

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

MW: Revolutions Aesthetic is a long book and it will be obvious that it was written with an academic audience in mind. Nevertheless, I do believe that those who are interested in the making of modern Syria, cultural politics in the Middle East, world literature and cinema, and political thought more broadly will find much to chew on throughout. The book aspires to a kind of multidisciplinarity that is often invoked but less often executed. To be sure, by virtue of this approach—or set of approaches—Revolutions Aesthetic opens onto multiple scholarly fields—history, comparative literature, film studies, political science—and, of course, to the possibility that not all will be satisfied by my methodological choices or my interpretation of the works under study. Be that as it may, my hope is that Syrians will read this book (hopefully with an Arabic-language edition to appear soon) and that many will find the diverse representations of Syrian literature, film, and intellectual life familiar and even comforting. Having the opportunity to become friends with writers and filmmakers whose work is discussed throughout the book was an essential part of my process of researching, thinking, and writing. I hope that this book can move beyond its “academic” concerns in order to become part of a wide-ranging conversation among Syrians and scholars of Syria.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

MW: Currently I am writing an intellectual history of modern Syria, one that looks at various forms of intellectual inquiry and social thought during the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. The book will tie together different aspects of intellectual debate, social thought, and political trends that have defined the history of modern and contemporary Syria. Some parts of this project have been published, one in an article about Michel ʿAflaq and the intellectual history of Baʿthism, the other in a book chapter on the question of religion, secularism, and sectarianism in modern Syrian social thought. In addition, I am involved in multiple translation projects. I am translating Syria in Ruins: Atrocity, Representation, and the Challenge of Reconstruction (working title) by the Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh, which is a challenging book that situates universal discussions about mass violence, genocide, and torture in relation to the brutal crackdown on the Syrian revolution as well as the personal experiences of political prisoners in Asadist Syria, including al-Haj Saleh himself.

J: What is the state of Syrian studies and how can it do more to raise its profile as well as that of Syrian scholars and intellectuals? 

MW: Syrian studies has long been a small yet vital field within Middle East studies—the Syrian Studies Association (SSA) is the lodestar our scholarly community—but it has not sufficiently established itself in international terms. Given the complexity of the situation in and around Syria over the past decade, it makes sense that the field has been on its heels. But I think there is an opportunity now to organize ourselves in a more regular and global way. There are thriving and diverse intellectual and cultural scenes that are being created by Syrians around the world, especially in Berlin and Istanbul. In addition to recognizing the dreadful circumstances that led to the creation of these Syrian diasporic communities, it would be wonderful to see a concentrated effort on the part of Syrian studies scholars to build networks and organize events that bring together international academics and Syrian intellectuals. While I am not a fan of Zoom—we are all fatigued from the screen life—new digital infrastructure enables this sort of collaboration even for those who are unable to travel, for whatever reasons. It has never been easy for Syrians (whether coming from Syria or elsewhere) to attend scholarly meetings like MESA given the draconian visa restrictions facing prospective visitors to the United States and Canada. I would really like to see a series of events, which could perhaps become regular occasions, that would allow scholars of Syria and Syrian intellectuals, writers, and artists to come together and share their ideas and their work in a way that the field has not yet institutionalized.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the introduction, pp. 1-4, 38-39)

Revolutions Aesthetic is a critical-historical study of aesthetics, politics, and cultural production in Syria during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, one that places literature and cinema at the center of the story. Historical scholarship dealing with this period tends to focus on politics, war, and socioeconomic transformation. By contrast, this book draws on rich sources that have gone neglected or underappreciated by historians and other scholars—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—in order to throw new light on the historical evolution of Syrian state, society, and culture. Some of these materials were produced under state auspices; others were made independently. Either way, Syrian art and culture have had a complicated relationship with the state and the political. Revolutions Aesthetic takes as its object certain dimensions of the cultural universe of the Baʿthist regime, nominally in power in Syria since March 8, 1963 and then fundamentally transformed with the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad (1930–2000) through the November 1970 “corrective movement” (al-ḥaraka al-taṣḥīḥiyya). In addition to launching myriad economic, social, political, and military initiatives, this regime also embarked on a project I refer to as Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution. In my use of the term, Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution entailed the conceptualization, dissemination, and (often haphazard) implementation of a new aesthetic ideology, one that drew on existing modes of artistic engagement while also charting new directions for Syrian, pan-Arab, and Third Worldist cultural and intellectual life. State institutions and regime elites were enlisted to reshape Syrian culture through an aesthetics of power that hinged on communicative languages that I characterize as speaking-to and speaking-for. Despite the substantial efforts dedicated to state- and nation-building, the Syrian regime could never completely capture the cultural and intellectual fields. Competing artistic visions, comprehensible in terms of the aesthetics of resistance and the aesthetics of solidarity, were articulated respectively through what I term speaking-against and speaking-with and therefore coexisted with regime power and state culture in uneasy but sometimes unexpectedly untroubled ways.

Revolutions Aesthetic sees works of literature and film as sites of agonistic struggle over aesthetic ideology. Thereby, I hope, it fundamentally recasts the cultural and intellectual history of contemporary Syria. The tangled histories of state power, ideological refashioning, technocratic reform, and social transformation can be understood through this evolving, dialectical relationship between aesthetics and politics. If the aesthetic ideology of Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution supported the wider aims of a revolutionary Arab nationalist agenda—the struggle to liberate the peoples of the Arabic-speaking world from Zionism, imperialism, economic “backwardness,” and cultural malaise—its exponents seemed untroubled by the consolidation of a cult of personality around Hafiz al-Asad and the concomitant solidification of an authoritarian security state under his rule and that of his son Bashar, who succeeded him in 2000 as a consensus replacement acceptable to the most influential elements in the ruling apparatus. Despite gestures toward the conceptual foundations of Baʿthist Arab nationalism—the ongoing and comprehensive reordering of society as part of Arab nationalist “resurrection” (al-baʿth) and nods to the venerable slogan “Liberty, [Arab] Unity, Socialism” (ḥurriyya, waḥda, ishtirākiyya)—the aesthetic ideology of Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution during the late twentieth century entailed, however implicitly, the disavowal of early Baʿthists, including most importantly Michel ʿAflaq (1910–1989), cofounder of the Baʿth Party during the early 1930s. This ideological and personal falling out with ʿAflaq and all that he stood for was defined as much by the political-economic orientation of the new regime in its sputtering progress toward liberalization and détente with the capitalist West as it was by internal party factionalism. In place of that vanguardist pan-Arab nationalism with its Marxist or Marxisant tinges, the Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution was oriented otherwise: promoting Syrian nationalism as an iteration of pan-Arab nationalism; foregrounding the inspirational powers of a heroic leader and muscular leadership generally; and constructing an aesthetics of power that resonated with the signature style of al-Asad’s political rule. Salah al-Din al-Bitar (1912–1980), cofounder with ʿAflaq of the Baʿth Party, adhered more stringently to a left political project typically identified with the so-called Neo-Baʿth that seized power in February 1966, even though he served multiple terms as prime minister between 1963 and 1966. And while al-Bitar clashed with the program of the Asadist-Baʿthists associated with the corrective movement—he was shot to death in Paris in July 1980 in an assassination reported to have been ordered by the Syrian regime—he shared their views that revolution in Syria should not be exclusively political or political-economic in nature. “In the Baathist system,” wrote al-Bitar, “the Arab revolution is not only a social, economic and even national revolution, but a total revolution; or, to employ a modern term, a ‘cultural’ revolution, in which the first aim is to restore Arab unity and personality.”

The revamped aesthetics of power attributable to the Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution promoted specific visions of heroism, masculinity, virtuous leadership, pan-Arab unity, state sovereignty, cultural patriotism, and political commitment. State-affiliated institutions such as the National Film Organization and the Arab Writers’ Union were authorized to advocate for robust literary, cinematic, and cultural engagement at a time of regional military antagonism, domestic and international sectarian conflict, and economic crisis. Over the course of this period, the Baʿth Party—along with the military, the domestic security services, and the government bureaucracy—was instrumentalized in reshaping the institutional and political landscape of the country in a way that also transformed Baʿthism itself. Once a vanguardist Arab nationalist party with aspirations of becoming a mass political movement, the Baʿth hardened into one core component of a corporatist state anchored by pragmatic bargains with delineated sectors of national society rather than a revolutionary leadership pursuing more idealistic commitments. Given the parallels and overlaps between the political and aesthetic dimensions of this transformation, Syrian cultural and intellectual history can be profitably interwoven with scholarship on politics, military affairs, and social dynamics. I stage this encounter through, for example, a discussion of the intellectual dimensions of Syrian military history in the 1960s through the 1980s; and a cultural analysis of the security state as reflected in literature and film produced during the early 2000s.

My modest scholarly contribution in Revolutions Aesthetic pales in significance compared with the scale of human suffering and loss that is the true tragedy of the Syria War: over a half million dead and nearly half of the Syrian population internally displaced, made into international refugees, or other- wise forced into exile. If the Syrian revolution and the war that followed have attracted substantial international attention in terms of geostrategic military analysis and humanitarian concern for the shocking displacement, destruction, and human suffering that has ensued, the cultural consequences of the revolution and the aesthetic dimensions of cultural production in the time of the war have attracted less attention. The destruction and persistent inaccessibility of archives and other historical materials in Syria will continue to complicate the research agenda of both Syrian and non-Syrian scholars. By gathering a range of literature and film into a single chronological narrative, Revolutions Aesthetic provides a glimpse into underappreciated perspectives on contemporary Syrian history which deserve to be studied and celebrated in their own right but also, crucially, might become part of the foundation for imagining different futures for the country. Because of the relatively ahistorical cultural analysis of this period hitherto, what has not yet been adequately appreciated is the extent to which the aesthetic ideology of Asadist-Baʿthist cultural revolution as well as the ensemble of competing aesthetic ideologies that occasionally challenged and sometimes affirmed state cultural production left its mark on the conditions of possibility for writers, artists, and filmmakers to generate new kinds of cultural production in the time of the Syria War. This entailed, among other things, attempts at unlearning statist cultural ideology and struggling to revolutionize culture in new ways, to re-revolutionize a cultural field that had already been staked out and incompletely captured by the rhetoric of revolution so pervasive in Asadist-Baʿthist Syria. The repurposing of “revolution” after the aesthetic-ideological field had been structured and surveilled by the security state for forty years was a monumental challenge for writers, filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals during this moment of possibility and danger. While my focus is not the military or political history of the Syrian revolution or the Syria War, extensive discussion in the pages that follow shows how crucial the Syrian revolution and the Syria War have been to the renewed flourishing of and sharpened contestation within the literary and cinematic domains. Revolutions Aesthetic showcases how the struggle over aesthetic ideology in Asadist-Baʿthist Syria became all too relevant once again, in ways both old and new, in the time of the Syria War, with repercussions that are still being felt and consequences yet to be understood.

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.