Dženita Karić, Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (New Texts Out Now)

Dženita Karić, Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (New Texts Out Now)

Dženita Karić, Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (New Texts Out Now)

By : Dženita Karić

Dženita Karić, Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

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

Dženita Karić (DK): If you were to visit a typical Bosniak house, you would notice that it usually has at least one framed picture of Mecca and Medina, a prayer rug some last year Hajji brought together with tiny vessels of kohl and oud, and—unless they disappeared in the horrors of the last war—many black and white photos of old family members passing through Istanbul and Damascus while on their holiest journey facilitated by the bus transport of the socialist Yugoslavia. Some Bosnian Muslims even cultivated the tradition of writing about the pilgrimage in the form of diaries, itineraries, or travelogues, which remain unpublished to this day. The nurturing of the attachment to the Hajj goes far back in history; many manuscript libraries around the world contain treatises and guidebooks in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish hailing from sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, which were written by Bosniaks. And throughout the twentieth century, the Hajj was a frequent topic in newspapers and journals, of interest to both Muslim and non-Muslim audiences. All this shaped the pilgrimage discourse well beyond the strict religious and communal boundaries.

Thus, my motivation to write the book was primarily the realization that the Hajj is omnipresent in Bosnian written, oral, and visual culture, and that the attachment to the pilgrimage remains constantly present among Bosniaks despite political and social upheavals that Bosnia faced, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This does not mean that the way the Hajj was experienced by Bosnian Muslims remained untouched by these external factors, but that its structure proved to be flexible enough to sustain a continuous appeal even among those who could never visit Mecca and Medina. Furthermore, the Hajj is a stable link between different nodes of Islamic geographies, and a unique mobility connecting the Balkans with Turkey and the Arab world. The process of writing this book was not without its challenges, especially because the study of Bosnian Islamic history does not fall neatly in the existing boundaries of area studies or even Islamic studies. One additional challenge was that working on Hajj literature implied working from textual and generic margins; this is the material which is mostly overlooked by historical and theological studies, yet can convey multitudes regarding the meanings humans give to a ritual and a mobility.

The central premise of my book is that the Hajj literature mediates between the historical context and the attachment to the transcendent.

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

DK: The central premise of my book is that the Hajj literature mediates between the historical context and the attachment to the transcendent. From this many other topics ensue: the way Bosnian Muslims embedded the ritual with meanings, as well as how they connected with other religious neighbors and non-Muslims in the Middle East and beyond. It also speaks about the role of the state in the cultivation and control of Hajj discourses for political purposes, particularly in the twentieth century.

The book analyzes literature on the Hajj written in three languages (Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Bosnian) and of a range of genres—from fada’il and khutbas to travelogues and essays—in a longue durée perspective from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Thus, it includes a diverse range of material in order to show different facets of Bosnian understandings of the pilgrimage. The book progresses diachronically from the first writings on Mecca and Medina by Bosnian ulama residents in different cities of the Ottoman Empire, through explorations of travelogues of ordinary Ottoman Bosnians who candidly wrote about their experiences and the people they encountered, to overwhelming transformations in transport and print in the modern times which brought many new authors onto the Hajj writing scene. 

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

DK: I was trained as a literary historian, as well as a philologist, and my first book project, which I completed as a part of my research at the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo in 2011, dealt with Arabic literature, and more specifically the authors Ghassan Kanafani and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, whose works I analyzed in the postcolonial framework. This book zoomed in on a particular corpus in a limited time span, which is quite different from my latest book which spans centuries and does not necessarily focus on a single author but rather on a conglomerate of different texts.  What is similar between the two books, however, is the analysis of historical and social context that underpins the literary works. In my recent work, I focus on religious writings and the ways in which the historical context shapes them, as well as how this type of literature can push the discussions on the role of religion in society forward. In a parallel manner, the book on Ghassan Kanafani and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra underlined the power of literature to affect the political and social reality. 

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

DK: I wrote Bosnian Hajj Literature with multiple audiences in mind. Since it is an interdisciplinary work, I hope it will find readers in Islamic, Middle Eastern, Ottoman, religious, and area studies, as well as, importantly, in the budding field of Bosnian studies (for a delineation of this field see the new edited volume by Adna Karamehić Oates and Dženeta Karabegović).  It is also important to notice here that my book falls into the rising field of Hajj studies, and thus could be of interest to researchers working on other geographical areas. Yet, when I was writing this book, I had wider non-academic audiences in mind, and I hope that many will pick this book to read more about Bosnian Hajjis throughout the centuries. 

I hope that this book will help in turning attention to Bosnian history in conversation with theoretical and practical discussions in the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. Bosnia is, to use the phrase David Henig mentions in his book, a “badly parked car,” its history usually seen in the light of the Serbian aggression and ensuing post-transitional economic despair. Most tragically, it is seen as unrelated and unconnected—in other words, irrelevant—to what is happening in other “more central” regions. This is a discussion which is long overdue, and one of the goals of my book is not to erase the horrendous ruptures created by wars and aggressions, but to point to the mechanisms of continuities that survive these and bind Bosnian Muslims to their co-believers in other regions. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

DK: I am currently working on early modern Ottoman devotional piety, focusing on the prayer books and treatises related to Prophet-centered piety and cultivation of emotions. In that, I am particularly interested in the mobility of ideas and practices and their circulation from Arab provinces to the Balkans and back.

J: What did the Hajj signify for Bosnian Muslims? 

DK: While the vast majority of Bosnian Muslims—like Muslims elsewhere—were unable to go on a pilgrimage both in the past and in the present, the Hajj still figured prominently in their lives. This was at least partly due to pervading Hajj discourses consisting of a range of texts (as well as sensory objects that constituted that Hajj habitus). The Hajj was more than a pure act of obedience. In Sufi texts, it was embedded with an internal dimension, which made pilgrims into guests of God. The Hajj was also conceived as a grand journey which included ziyaras to tombs of saints across Anatolia and Sham. In the modern period, the Hajj is mobilized in a variety of political programs and becomes a way to conceptualize Islamic answers to modernity. This led to its co-optation by the Yugoslav state after World War II, where small Hajj delegations were sent in an effort to find allies among the postwar Arab governments. Finally, with the Serbian aggression from 1992 to 1995, many Bosniaks found the Hajj to be a reward for their struggles for identity and religion and a place to show their sacrifice to other Muslims. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction: Writing about the Hajj through the Centuries, pp. 1-4)

In the hot summer of 1981, two Bosnian women decided to go on the Hajj, driving a Volkswagen Beetle all the way to Mecca. One of them, Hidajeta, was a housewife, and the other, Safija, worked for Energoinvest, a gigantic energy corporation and the pride of the socialist Yugoslav state. The two pilgrims were friends; however, they were also bound by a subversive link: in their youth, both of them had been members of the women’s branch of the Young Muslim Movement, and in the late 1940s Safija had even spent several years in prison, for her political and social activities that were deemed unacceptable by the new post-World War II communist rule. By the time they decided to go on the Hajj, the Yugoslav communist leader Tito was no longer alive. The purges of the early decades seemed to belong to a different era. Yet, Safija thought it would be wise to keep quiet about her journey in order to avoid troubles at work: ‘We won’t hide but we won’t spread the news either’, she said. The journey by car – and not by plane or bus, as Yugoslav Hajjis were by then accustomed to – meant to mask their true intention and to present the trip as any other tourist adventure across the Middle East.

More than three decades later, Hidajeta’s children wanted to publish the diary in which she had jotted down the impressions and descriptions of her journey. Hidajeta was no longer alive, and Safija – in 2014 a lively octogenarian – decided to write an introduction and add photos to serve as documentation and means of remembrance. Hidajeta’s family printed the diary in several copies. Since the community knew me as a person working on Hajj narratives, I was given a copy which I reviewed in Preporod, a local religious biweekly newspaper, published in Sarajevo and distributed across Bosnia and the Bosnian diaspora abroad. The review stirred great interest in the diary, which was not readily available to readers. Moreover, over the ensuing years, various stories about local pilgrims and curiosities regarding their travels continued to appear in the media, presenting a most popular topic especially during the Hajj season. 

Hidajeta’s diary consists of a series of entries which were written at different points of the journey, describing the trip and also the Hajj ritual itself. The diary reads as instructions for future pilgrims, the account of a very unique embodied experience placed in a concrete time and place, as well as a narrative that signals the Islamic ethical virtue of unity in diversity under one God. In all these aspects, the Hajj is revealed as a central event over the course and entirety of a believer’s life, and as main motivation for the specific and in many ways unprecedented act of writing. While the former remains bound to the singularity of Hidajeta’s life, the latter concerns everyone who read, heard, saw, or engaged with the text, often transcending Hidajeta’s original intention. After all, the diary was published posthumously, mediating her religious experience to readers unbeknownst to her, while simultaneously rendering her present beyond the limits of human mortality.

As far as we know, Hidajeta never wrote anything even remotely resembling her Hajj diary, but she was certainly not alone in this once-in-a-lifetime endeavour. As part of a global phenomenon manifest across vastly different Muslim societies throughout history, many Bosnian Hajjis wrote about their pilgrimage experiences in a range of forms and genres, mediating them to even larger audiences of Muslims and non-Muslims without access to the holy places of Mecca and Medina. Writing about the Hajj is arguably the ultimate democratic medium, allowing both highly educated and semi-literate, rich and poor, women and men, to instruct, show, or share different facets of knowledge about the Hajj. At the same time, this medium served devotional purposes, thus connecting individual believers vertically with God, while also expanding their religious experience beyond the performance of the pilgrimage to include interactions with people and places. 

This book is about Hajj writings as a medium between the pilgrimage and the world, between striving for the transcendent and material demands of Bosnian Muslim lives shaped by a range of factors. It investigates the ways in which such textual practices reflect the influence of the socio-cultural circumstances on religious experience, and, in turn, the effect that the Hajj (as a ritual and a journey) has on conceptions of the world itself. Writing about the Hajj encompasses different genres, by no means unified by any formal criteria except for the central focus on the pilgrimage and the holy places of Mecca and Medina. Pilgrimage, in textual sources and as living, embodied practice for its participants, includes travel. Where possible, the extension of the pilgrimage to include both the journey and the ritual in the context of a vast Hajj literature allows for a detailed observation of the dynamics between the relationships to different spaces, as well as for showing how the lines between the mundane and sacred are blurred. 

By focusing on the Hajj literature created by Bosnian Muslims over the span of five centuries, this book examines socio-cultural influences and changing observations of holy places and the pilgrimage, in order to demonstrate the overwhelming importance of the Hajj as a multi-faceted experience, motive and symbol. The analysis turns to two aspects that affected the rise and ongoing importance of Hajj literature throughout the long period between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. Firstly, where possible, it observes the socio-material predispositions in terms of mobility, literacy and ideological pressures in order to see how they shaped the pilgrimage, in terms of both experience and expectation. Secondly, it evaluates the inner structures of religious expressions about the Hajj and shows how they participate in constructing an Islamic discursive tradition. Both of these overlap in the question of writing, which falls under both the influence of socio-cultural factors (such as the fact that the choice of a language or script is often predetermined by education) and the workings of a discursive tradition with its own genres, expectations and mechanisms for adaptation and change. A wholesome view of both intertwined perspectives indicates that the Hajj was never an isolated, atemporal practice devoid of external – even non-Muslim – influence; rather, it simultaneously retained a particular discourse inspired by Islam, which shaped the way in which Muslims saw and experienced the pilgrimage.

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.