Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (New Texts Out Now)

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (New Texts Out Now)

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (New Texts Out Now)

By : Azad Essa

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (Pluto Press, 2023).

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

Azad Essa (AE): I grew up with the belief that India, having been part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and a friend to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, was a friend to the Palestinians. But when Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014 and implemented a long standing Hindu nationalist sentiment to turn India into a Hindu supremacist state, I began to notice how Delhi and Tel Aviv began cooperating with each other more than ever before. Under Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu, the countries became strategic partners. Then in 2019, after Modi’s government revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, a senior Indian diplomat in New York said that India would look to replicate the Israeli model in Indian occupied Kashmir, meaning building Hindu-only settlements in the Muslim-majority region just as Israel has built Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank. Though I had traveled to Kashmir and to Palestine and seen the similarities shared by the two occupations, I was still surprised by the brazenness of his comments. And I wanted to understand how a country that was perceived to be so close to Palestine just a few decades ago suddenly talks about replicating Israel. This is how this story begins.

I examine the ways in which Zionism and Hindutva have been in conversation with each other for several decades.

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

AE: This book started off being about the new alliance between the two countries, but it actually ends up arguing that India and Israel are more alike than many of us would like to believe. I think there are two crucial parts of this argument. First, I look at how post-independence India realized early on that a pro-Palestine position suited its interests as a leader of the so-called third world and in ensuring close ties with the Arab world. Whereas India had a public posture against Israel, the Indian establishment privately admired the Israelis and secretly worked with them when it came to intelligence sharing as well as arms purchases. This is significant especially because there remain persistent myths that India was historically a “friend” to the Palestinians. Second, I examine the ways in which Zionism and Hindutva have been in conversation with each other for several decades. It turns out that both ideologies are quite integral to the makeup of each state as evidenced by the relationship today. I also track the military industrial complex and the ways in which the Indian lobby has worked with the Israel lobby in the United States, as well as the similarities between the occupations in Palestine and Kashmir and how the two countries are building economic ecosystems to maintain their ethnonationalist and settler colonial projects.

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

AE: This is a book about connections. And so much of it draws on my work as a journalist over the past decade or so as I reported from several places across the globe, including Kashmir. For several years, I reported on central and southern Africa, focusing on poverty, development, politics, and human rights. But I was often surprised by the stories I would find along the way. For instance, I often came across Israeli projects during my reporting trips in the strangest of places: an Israeli flag in a village in the Central African Republic or outside Accra in Ghana. And I observed how Israel used “development” and “technology” to build goodwill with African leaders as well as amplify its myths as a miracle nation to ordinary people. These nefarious developments worried me because Israel’s assistance on the continent was predicated on growing normalization. In other words, these countries will eventually provide Israel with diplomatic support at forums like the UN and become a cover for its crimes. And few people seemed to be writing about it. Meanwhile, I have long known and written about how India has abused western fascination (and ignorance) with Gandhi, yoga, its cuisine, and its upper caste Hindu diaspora to sell a “peace-loving” Brand India story to the world. Bringing together the historical and contemporary connections between the two was a natural outcome of my work. 

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

AE: I am hoping that the book will influence students of history, and activists working on issues of human rights, freedom of speech, and even on larger questions of settler colonialism and ethnonationalism, to better understand how systems of oppression overlap. Identifying how multiple oppressions cooperate with each other presents opportunities for shared tactics of resistance. I also hope that it will assist journalists in the West to better understand India and reconsider the overall coverage of South Asia. India has managed to portray itself in an immensely positive light over the decades and the mainstream Western press has helped create and maintain that image, despite the incredible amount of authoritarianism and violence the Indian state has been involved in, especially in Kashmir. The Delhi-Tel Aviv alliance is the perfect opportunity to unpeel the myths of the past. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AE: I continue to report and write about the rise of Hindutva in the United States, especially the ways in which the Hindutva lobby aligns itself with the Zionist lobby and with US imperial interests. I am also tracking the ways in which these relationships are manifesting into similar tactics being used in the United States to stifle free speech on campuses or silence Palestinian or Kashmiri voices, be it in the United States or elsewhere. Moreover, I am looking at the ways India and Israel are using popular culture, like television and cinema, to expand their relationship. The ties between India and Israel are deep rooted but we are only beginning to understand the extent of the relationship.


Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 3, pp. 83-90)                                              

Hindu Nationalism and Zionism

The geo-political reconfigurations following the end of World War I had a profound impact on independence and nationalist movements across the globe. India was no different. The INC, under the leadership of Gandhi saw the events of World War I, the Balfour Declaration, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Caliphate, and the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1922, as further reasons to repudiate British rule. It also fomented closer ties with Muslims in India and the assertion of an anti-imperial agenda.

In Palestine, Zionism had arrived. Palestinians were increasingly displaced, excluded from employment opportunities and denied entry into Jewish-only trade unions. As the continuous flow of Jewish refugees from Europe increased, the rate of dispossession of Palestinians only increased. The program of building a Jewish state brought together Jews (as well as dispensationalist or Christian Zionists) of various persuasions and motivations.

The movement spawned political, cultural and labor Zionism (and later revisionist Zionism), each with its own idea as to the character of this future state. However different these might have been, Zionism in totality agreed that this future state would need to have a Jewish majority and therefore establishing it was ultimately predicated on the act of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.The political project went against Orthodox Jewish beliefs, but it nonetheless proceeded. However, political Zionists were so detached from the sentiments of the Jewish polity, that they were prepared to accept a homeland in Argentina and Uganda, before cultural Zionists put that matter to rest.

Once the political project was endorsed, it wasn’t long before the Bible was used as “proof” that Jews belonged to Palestine. And in keeping with the peculiarities of the time, the Zionists reframed their movement as one befitting a “national liberation movement.”

India was the crown jewel of the British Empire, and Zionists paid attention to both the art and literature that emerged from India, as well as the mass mobilizations that threatened the British Empire. 

However, it was Hindu nationalists who identified immediate kinship with the Zionist movement.

They saw no contradiction in admiring the European fascist movement that targeted European Jews as well as the Zionist project that looked to revitalize the Jewish race by building an exclusive homeland for the Jewish people. The support of European powers for a Jewish state in the Middle East, then, turned a colonial matter into a civilizational conquest. The subtext now was that “Israel was a device for holding Islam—and later the Soviet Union—at bay,” Edward Said wrote. 

Herzl, the writer Abdul-Wahab Kayalli argued, had routinely portrayed Zionism “as a political meeting point between Christianity and Judaism in their common stance against Islam and the barbarism of the Orient.”

Unsurprisingly, in India, Hindu nationalists saw “the Jewish question” in Europe as “the Muslim problem” in their own backyard. “India’s Muslims are on the whole more inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany.” Savarkar said in a speech in December 1939. 

For Hindu nationalists, the support for both fascism in Europe as well as Zionism won them admirers among the right wing in Europe and helped recast themselves as adjacent to the global racial elite. In Harbilas Sarda’s book, Hindu Superiority: An Attempt to Determine the Position of the Hindu Race in the Scale of Nations, the famous Indian judge writes that his effort to glorify the Hindu past, was not meant to “run down any creed or nationality [. . .] it may be remarked that the evils of the rule of the Afghans, Turks, and others were due not to the religion they professed but by their ignorance and backwardness in civilization.”

It is precisely this invocation of a racial, civilizational, cultural superiority and adoption of a very European tradition of pathologizing Muslims as a backward, problematic minority that lured Hindu nationalists and supremacists toward European ethno-fascism.

For Hindu nationalists and supremacists, the comparison with Zionism, then, was not incidental. It merely represented an exchange in a larger, and longer conversation between Judaism and Hinduism, as “two age-old civilizations.” Hindutva’s affinity for the Zionist search for a homeland spoke to their interactions across the centuries. 

Hindutva’s construction of the Hindu proto-race (as “insider”) in opposition to Muslims (as ultimate “outsider”) through a focus on religion, culture, and philosophy was a marker of “civilization.”

In other words, Hindutva held that the people of India were all fundamentally Hindu and that Hinduism was ultimately their race-culture.

It also determined who could be part of the nation. As academic Satradu Sen argues, both Zionism and Hindutva developed “an interest in deploying the language and imagery of a racialized people whose health was both a scientific and a political problem.” Golwalker, in particular, was caustic and influential when he articulated the place of “the other” in his book We or Our Nationhood Defined: “All those not belonging to the national i.e. Hindu Race, Religion, Culture and Language, naturally fall out of the pale of real ‘National’ life.”

There were other similarities in the religious ethos of both Judaism and Hinduism, which right-wing proponents latched on to, too. Both Jews and Hindus purportedly rejected conversion and were unenthused by the proselytizing habits of others (Christians and Muslims). This underscored the aforementioned anxiety of racial “contamination” or being demographically overrun by Muslims or Arabs or Palestinians.

This concern is foundational to racial superiority as purported by both Zionists and Hindu nationalists. The duo also found symmetry in the vigor of the religion itself. Whereas Hinduism was about seeking eternal enlightenment, Judaism could be characterized as a journey “to search after the knowledge of God.” These similarities became the religious backbone for building ties between the political projects of Hindutva and Zionism, which relied on myth-making as a form of statecraft.

But the relationship didn’t happen immediately. With the labor Zionist movement becoming the dominant stream in Palestine, Zionists reached out to the presiding movement in India: the INC and Gandhi. For labor Zionists, Gandhi represented a version of Hinduism that appeared to match their egalitarian vision of Zionism still in denial over the actions of the Haganah, or militia. 

The Hindu nationalists however chose to understand Zionism in its full totality. It is no surprise that Ze ’ev Jabotinsky, the father of revisionist Zionism, or the version of Zionism that rejected labor Zionism’s “negotiation” in the Holy Land, wrote his manifesto, The Iron Wall, in 1923, the same year that Savarkar published his treatise on Hindutva.

Unlike labor Zionists, Jabotinsky was blunt about his ambitions. Hindu nationalists, too, saw the full project, understood the implications, and imbibed the values.

Jabotinsky argued that only the complete disenfranchising of Palestinians would convince them to accept the Jewish settlers. 

Likewise, for Hindu nationalists, the Congress party’s “policy of appeasement” delayed the inevitable: the creation of a majoritarian Hindu state. Philosophically, Hindutva was fundamentally anti-Muslim. The “Hindu” identity was built almost entirely in opposition to Muslims, even placed ahead of the struggle for independence. So much so, that some of Hindutva’s early ideologues extricated themselves from the larger Indian struggle for independence.

As early as 1931, it was clear that all Zionists “concurred ideologically with the principle of Jewish sovereignty over all Palestine,” Zeev Tzahor writes. If anything, labor Zionism functioned as a trojan horse for settler-colonialism. They held disagreements on strategy, on timing, on language, “there was no difference between our militarists and our vegetarians,” as Jabotinsky put it.

Furthermore, the Zionist project was much more invested in a mythical history—a trait it shares with Hindutva. 

In other words, when it comes to Hindu nationalism and the complete project of Zionism—be it cultural, political, labor, revisionist (right wing)—the two ideas share more than symmetry. They shared kinship. And their differences aside, the pursuit of consolidating dominion to create unified states with a single culture and identity, predicated on erasing the “other” is what ultimately defined their kinship.

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.