Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab (eds.), Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts (New Texts Out Now)

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Mar 1, 2023 Lebanon
Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab (eds.), Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts (New Texts Out Now)

Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab (eds.), Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts (New Texts Out Now)

By : Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman

Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab, eds., Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts (Syracuse University Press, 2022).

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

Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab (MH & MA): We have been working for the past few years on a large oral history project about women and the Lebanese Civil War, doing interviews, collecting information, and listening to stories. For the larger project, we spoke to about fifty women about various aspects of their lives during the war—work, activism, militancy, families, school, politics, and so on. All of the women we talked to spoke about labor and work in many different and fascinating ways. Over the course of this work, we realized we were also starting to come back again and again to art of all different kinds. As a number of the conversations started to focus on artistic topics, we connected our discussions of creative work to labor. We started thinking more about creative labor itself, and the many other kinds of labor that women do. Malek is a labor historian and Michelle works on literary topics, so in a way the art and labor focus is one that really merges our areas of scholarly interest and brings them together in really engaging and stimulating ways. We also know and got to know better some incredible artists, scholars, and artist/scholars, three of whom are contributors to this book. So we put it all together here.
All of the pieces are engaging these issues in relation to the Lebanese Civil War and the way that women worked, created, and lived in this war.

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

MH & MA: This book has chapters by both of us and by four amazing colleagues too! It is devoted to thinking about art—widely conceived—and labor, but it also spans more topics as well, particularly how women’s work and labor are thought about. All of the pieces are engaging these issues in relation to the Lebanese Civil War and the way that women worked, created, and lived in this war. Every conversation we had with the contributing authors was so interesting to us as they talk about so many areas of artistic production that are hardly ever written about! For example, one chapter, by Nova Robinson who is a historian, focuses on the fascinating story of Seta Manoukian who was an art therapist working with children during the war. In her chapter, she includes some of Manoukian’s own art, in addition to the art of the children. Another delves into the plastic arts and sculpture and really investigates both the artistic production of three women artists—Tagreed Darghouth, Samar Mogharbel, and Ginane Makki Bacho. The chapter’s author, Yasmine Nachabe Taan, explores Darghouth’s large portraits of olive trees, Moghabel’s sculptures of cars made of found shrapnel, and Makki Bacho’s assemblage pieces. There is a contribution by Zéna Meskaoui which is a detailed, close reading of a performance art piece by Lina Majdoulanie, Appendice. The performance of Majdoulanie is done with her partner Rabih Mroué and focuses around her desire to cremate her body after her death. The filmmaker and scholar Mary Jirmanus Saba’s chapter focuses on cinematic productions that explore the concept of “the most beautiful of mothers” and she shows how poetry, art, and women’s labor are connected in films focused on the Lebanese Civil War.

As you can see, these four chapters are really diverse and treat topics that are both interesting and also understudied. We have also each contributed our own chapters. Malek’s sets up the book by painting a picture of women’s labor during the war, drawing on interviews and writing an oral history of women tobacco workers. Michelle’s chapter closes the book, studying four literary works, by Radwa Ashour, Adania Shibli, Susan Abulhawa, and Janna Elhassan, that offer creative expressions that do and do not talk about the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. She offers readings that focus on how Arab women have narrated this moment, challenging the notion that one must always focus on violent detail to tell stories and histories of violence. 

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

MH & MA: Both of us have done previous work that led us here. Malek is an oral historian who has worked on women’s labor before. His first book, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation, is an oral history of how women working in the tobacco industry helped to shape the modern state of Lebanon through their labor. The analysis in this book is grounded in materialist history and links class, gender, and anti-colonial struggles in understanding the ways in which women became radicalized in their milieus. It focuses on rural women and their militancy and pays close attention to cultural, economic, historical, political, and other factors when trying to understand women’s lives in a changing Lebanon. 

Michelle’s work is not in history, per se, but rather in literature, and she has written extensively about women’s fiction, particularly in Lebanon. Two of her previous books focus on Lebanese women’s literature, and how women tell and retell stories, using language creatively as a way to express their realities. In her second book, Native Tongue, Stranger Talk: The Arabic and French Literary Landscapes of Lebanon, Michelle investigates the way that authors use the Arabic language to inscribe messages about class, gender, religion, and sect in challenging ways within their novels.

One of the ways in which our scholarly work brings us together is that we are both concerned with when and why people tell stories, and also how specifically they tell them. In our joint project on the Lebanese Civil War, we also both pick up on themes that we have explored separately in our previous work—especially telling stories that we are less likely to hear and that challenge received narratives. We are both committed to highlighting women’s action—their activism, militancy, and resistance—as well as their work and creativity.

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

MH & MA: We hope that this book can contribute to the small but growing scholarship on the Lebanese Civil War, especially women and war. As an explicitly feminist study, we hope it highlights women’s experiences and voices, and also offers some new ways of thinking about and working with these issues. We would like everyone to read it who is interested in any of these topics at all—so many topics, themes, and issues are touched on in the book. We hope that it also appeals to a general readership interested in the Lebanese Civil War, women’s agency, struggles in war contexts, women’s protest and activism, and the production of art in wartime. And it also has color illustrations of some of the art we are talking about! We are proud of putting together a collection that highlights art and creative production in relation to work and labor. These are connections that are so important in people’s lives but that are rarely talked about or focused on. 

J: What is the pedagogical significance of your book? 

MH & MA: Our book integrates a rich body of theoretical and methodological approaches to thinking about women and war, and this war in particular. We worked to be sure that all of the pieces were written in an engaging and clear way so that it would be useful to students and teachers as well as researchers. Each chapter presents not only a different topic but also integrates different approaches to the study of women, war, labor, and the arts, making it a really useful pedagogical source for students, from undergraduates to those studying at graduate levels. The chapters offer firsthand accounts of women’s experiences in social, artistic, and labor spheres as well as many examples of their creative responses to the Lebanese Civil War. We believe that the diverse and interdisciplinary underpinnings of the chapters, their sophisticated but clearly articulated conceptual frameworks, and the style, presentation, and organization of the book will make it possible to integrate the book successfully into an array of upper-division undergraduate courses as well as graduate courses. We hope it could be used in courses that are organized around Middle Eastern studies; Arab studies; Middle Eastern women’s studies; women in the Arab world; war and society in the Arab world; art and war; art and activism; feminism and war; Lebanese history; Lebanese art history; and oral history and ethnography, for example.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

MH & MA: We are right now working on the next part of this large project and producing an oral history developed out of the stories of the many women we talked to. The working title of our next book is What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon. Together with some of the graduate researchers we worked with on the project, we are also working on producing a podcast where we talk about some of the stories that we were not able to fit in the book itself. To put this oral history together, we have transcribed, translated, and worked with the stories of about fifty women who we interviewed over a number of years. Mostly Lebanese and Palestinian women, they all lived and worked in Lebanon during the war. The stories that form the basis of the book are all told by women who were militants and activists during the civil war. They tell their stories in many different ways and focus on different things. This new project is closely linked to Women’s War Stories but delves into stories of militancy and activism in much more depth. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pp. 2-7)

Women’s War Stories

We all have stories to tell, and in one way or another we all have “war stories.” But what these stories are, how we tell them, and even how much they have to do with actual war vary. By invoking “war stories,” we are consciously playing on both the literal meaning of this expression---the stories people tell about being in an armed conflict---and the metaphorical use of this phrase in every day English to signify a story you tell about something harrowing or even just difficult you have lived through in life, something that was a challenge and that you often wear as a badge of honor. Differently than the way people relate to experiences of armed conflict and surviving war literally, we tell our metaphorical war stories all the time. They are a way to make sense of where we fit into the world, a way to work through our struggles, and a way to bond with others. 

We bring out both the literal and the metaphorical meaning of the phrase war stories to emphasize the continuity in how stories work as a way to understand and express experience. It is striking how adding the word women’s to war stories changes the expression to privilege the literal. The use of “war stories” as a way to express the everyday difficulties of life seems to be the provenance of men. One of the major reasons we have put this collection of essays together is that we wanted to bring more attention to the ways in which women lived through, survived, worked, and created art during the Lebanese Civil War. All of the book’s chapters focus on women who worked and produced art during this specific war, but as those stories are told, so are all of the other stories of challenges, struggles, and resistance that they faced as women in society---and as women artists, writers, filmmakers, tobacco workers, and so on.

The women’s war stories told here are different from each other, but all of them in one way or another narrate something as a way to cope with, understand, analyze, express, represent, or symbolize their struggles. To understand the meanings of these stories in our analyses, then, we draw upon the work of Dina Georgis. In her book The Better Story: Queer Affects from the Middle East (2013), Georgis implores us to look at stories and locate within them what she calls “better stories”---ways to live our lives and narrate them that can bring about better worlds than those we have. She thus proposes: 

If we have suffered from trauma and loss, it is impossible to experience that loss without symbolizing it. And, as long as the affect of loss persists, we continue to symbolize it in the writing of history and in the production of culture and identity. If we take seriously the presence of injury in our constructions, then it requires that we become different (ethical) learners and readers of history. It means that we account for the site of loss and injury in our postcolonial narratives and that we face all of the past’s ruins; namely all of our postcolonial dreams and nightmares....Not all responses to injury lead to the kind of “creative” survival we would wish for. Not all those injured by colonial violence resist the power of colonial domination heroically.

Georgis reminds us here that not all resistance is heroic, not everyone accounts for or reacts to situations in the same way. But in our writing of history, according to her, we can change the way we read history and learn about history. The title of her book, The Better Story, encapsulates her argument. We all must seek out and strive not only for better ways to tell our stories but also for better ways to read each other’s stories. When Georgis talks about the better story, she does not always mean the “happy ending” or a story containing only positive or good things. Rather, she suggests, we all should be looking for ways to create better stories---for ourselves, for each other, and for our world. Following this line of thinking, this collection is focusing on how we and others write our histories and produce culture and identity specifically in relation to the Lebanese Civil War.

… 

Feminist Storytelling: The Ethics of Telling Other Women’s Stories

Academic work based on women telling their own war stories is not a case of simple and transparent storytelling. Because we are producing this work in our roles as historians as well as literary, art, and film critics, all of the contributions in this collection are mediated versions of the stories that women tell about war. Publishing women’s stories---as carefully as we pay attention to accuracy and detail in reproducing them---is never a straightforward process. For example, all of the women interviewed for our project spoke in Arabic, and most of the creative work has also been produced in Arabic. With only a few exceptions, however, the academic work we are producing is being published in English. Even as we are documenting and translating women’s war stories, therefore, we shape their stories, and we ourselves are narrating another war story through them. 

The issue of language is one we are particularly sensitive to and have reflected on in great detail, especially as much of the work that one of us (Michelle Hartman) does is located in translation studies, the politics of translation in particular. How do we translate the stories of women from Arabic into English, from the Arabic-speaking Lebanese context to an English-speaking one in academia, from stories of war to words on a page? Language is connected to culture and society not only in relation to the politics of language but in the ways language encompasses more than just words spoken. We have tried to ensure that all of the contributions here take language and translation into account as one of the important areas to think through carefully when we tell stories about women and war and when we are responsible for telling and talking about the stories of other women. 

The question of our responsibility in (re)telling, researching, analyzing, and writing about the stories of other women is the overarching ethical question that our collection---and, indeed, our larger project---grapples with. We are extremely attuned to the fact that in making the space for women to tell their own stories, whether in the context of writing an oral history or presenting an analysis of interviews or studying film, literature, art, and performance, we are shaping and telling stories that belong to others. This delicate balance is one that we all have navigated individually in our own chapters but also one that we have worked on collectively. It was important to the integrity of our project that we ask all contributors to keep in mind their relationship to their material and their subjects as they were producing their essays.

These ethical questions about storytelling and writing the stories of others and for others are amplified in the context of war. Because war stories often recall trauma and difficult times and can trigger even more memories than an interviewer might have intended, not all women want to tell them---or even for them to be told. The final chapter in the collection, for example, explores the question of whether all stories should or must be told---or, in the words of Toni Morrison, if they ought to “be passed on.” Morrison’s acclaimed novel Beloved (1987) probes the question of stories to be passed on, specifically in relation to slavery in the United States. The parallels are remarkable: the comparison with stories of the Lebanese Civil War begs the question of why and how we tell stories, who we are telling them to and for, and how we choose to tell them. 

Finally, in relation to the ethics of writing war stories, we have endeavored to think about all of the stories we are passing on through these explorations of labor/work and the creative arts as not only rooted in one time period but also having a life before and after the specific part narrated. In thinking about what came before, we follow Sara Ahmed’s suggestion in Living a Feminist Life that “a story always starts before it can be told.” The collection of essays here looks to life before the war and follows along after it to give the fullest and most complete idea of what is being discussed. We hope to have identified some of the places and times where the stories we are telling here started not only to facilitate our way of telling and thinking about them but also to tell them better or, as Dina Georgis’s formulation would have it, to allow the “better story” to come through. 
Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

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.