NEWTON Bouquet – Palestine: Thirty years of Oslo (September 2023)

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Sep 12, 2023 Palestine
NEWTON Bouquet – Palestine: Thirty years of Oslo (September 2023)

NEWTON Bouquet – Palestine: Thirty years of Oslo (September 2023)

By : NEWTON Editors

NEWTON Bouquet – Palestine: Thirty years of Oslo (13 September)

On 13 September 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, better known as the Oslo Accord. In the three decades since, this and a further series of Israeli-Palestinian agreements have redefined Palestinian politics, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. As part of Jadaliyya’s marking of the thirtieth anniversary of Oslo, we offer this NEWTON bouquet that examines various Palestinian, Israeli, Israeli-Palestinian, and global dimensions of the new realities that developed in its wake.

1) Sunaina Maira, Jil Oslo: Palestinian Hip Hop, Youth Culture, and the Youth Movement

“One of the major political interventions of the youth movement is the call for a unified national identity linking the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Palestinians within the 1948 borders of Palestine (“1948 or ’48 Palestinians”). This is not a new political narrative but it is significant because it challenges the Oslo paradigm that fragmented the nation by situating what could be Palestine only in the West Bank and Gaza and deferring the status of Jerusalem, within the degraded terms of sovereignty supplied by Israel.”

2) Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo

“I am struck by how the historical context of the 1970s and 1980s is so often missing from conversations about the “peace process” and how quickly we forget the recent past. Many of the concepts that have served to demarcate the extent of possible Palestinian political horizons—autonomy rather than sovereignty, for example—emerged at a particular moment and are recurring today.”

 

3) Mandy Turner, From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of “Peace” 

“I wanted to know how the “peace” and the supposedly “interim” framework had shaped the lives of the different communities of people involved, and what had been their coping strategies and political responses to it. Because this required a more anthropological focus, I drew together expert scholars who had a deep knowledge of the communities and issues I wanted to explore.”

4) Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine 

“Using five critical junctures between 1917 and 2017, the book demonstrates how the law has been a site of oppression as well as a site of resistance for Palestinians. By showing how the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1922) established a legal structure of exception, the book is telling a different history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom; one that has been responsive to this structure over a century-long arc.”

 

5) Noura Erakat and Mouin Rabbani, Aborted State? The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures

“The book represents a compilation of articles and documents published by Jadaliyya during the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations in 2011-2012. We felt this moment represents—for better or worse—a critical juncture in Palestinian history and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, deserving of proper analysis and contextualization. It will either mark the moment at which Palestinians began to definitively disengage from the Oslo framework that has dominated their world for the past two decades and must, alongside the 1948 Nakba, be seen as the most catastrophic development in contemporary Palestinian history. Alternatively, it forms yet another attempt by a leadership lacking in strategic vision, tactical acumen, and political dynamism, to revive Oslo yet again.”

6) Perla Issa, The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions: An Everyday Perspective from Nahr el-Bared Camp

“My research aimed to understand the dynamics at play. How are factions maintaining a monopoly over political representation and camp organization, even when they are delegitimized in refugees’ eyes? Officially, the different political factions in the camps are divided along broad political stances vis-à-vis the “peace process,” whether they support the Oslo accords or not, and whether they are Islamic or secular in nature.”

7) Amahl A. Bishara, Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression

“Beyond the experiential level, recent decades have clarified how a politics of fragmentation has been a central mechanism of the Zionist project. The Oslo process rendered official Palestinian leadership complicit. As an ethnographer, I knew I could not investigate all dimensions of this dynamic, from Gaza to Lebanon to the Naqab and beyond, but I could look at the politics of expression in two neighboring locations.”

8) Gabriel Varghese, Palestinian Theatre in the West Bank: Our Human Faces

“By placing theories of abjection and counterpublic formation in conversation with each other, I have tried to argue that theater in the West Bank has been regulated by processes of colonial abjection and, yet, it is an important site for counterpublic formation.”

9) Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, “Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis”

“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.”

10) Frances S. Hasso, Buried in the Red Dirt: Race, Reproduction, and Death in Modern Palestine

“This was an iterative book shaped by my intellectual concerns and political commitments, what I learned by talking to Palestinian scholars, friends, and acquaintances, and what I learned in field, reading, and archival work. In short, I allowed Buried in the Red Dirt to find its path, which not incidentally included a late realization in the manuscript that “race” was so central to my argument it required more research and explicit discussion.”

11) Maryam S. Griffin, Vehicles of Decolonization: Public Transit in the Palestinian West Bank

“I noticed that public transportation in particular operated in such a way as to reject and overcome the attempted containment of Palestinian life in the post-Oslo shards of fragmented Palestinian territory. It is a mobile site where people collectively develop and negotiate mobility on their own terms, but of course it is a contested site. The collective movement of Palestinians is a target of Israeli control because denying self-determined movement to Palestinians is useful and necessary for Israel’s settler colonial drive to take Palestinian land and destroy the Palestinian people.”

12) Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine

“By decentering settler-colonial logics and narratives, the book takes up an indigenous Palestinian psychoanalysis and the varied clinical networks—what we call the psychotherapeutic commons—that have been built. We see these commons as one of many methods of engaging in the communal practice of sumud (stalwartness) and the politics of refusal across Palestine.”

13) Alison Glick, The Other End of the Sea

“I think the book addresses a variety of issues, which I hope is one of its strengths. It provides a glimpse into the lived experience of Palestinians, as viewed through the lens of the non-Palestinian protagonist, Rebecca—occupation, settler colonialism, exile, state violence. But it also surfaces issues that are universal: loss, alienation, the cruelty of borders and who controls them, (re)building community and kinship in a world that is antagonistic to both, and my favorite—radical love.”

14) Rebecca L. Stein, Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine

“Screen Shots is also a minor history of the digital present in Israel and Palestine, with a focus on the early years of widespread internet access and mobile networked technologies. I am interested in how political tactics shifted as communities and institutions in Israel and Palestine, from military institutions to anti-occupation activists in Palestine, began to gradually integrate these proliferating technologies and infrastructures into their political toolboxes.”

15) Norman G. Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End

“The book looks at the origins of the American Jewish relationship with Israel, and focuses on the historical, human rights, and diplomatic records on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It demonstrates that the authoritative scholarly treatments of these topics no longer support the Israeli narrative. The basic fact is that the formidable ideological façade Israel erected to deflect criticism of it has now more or less collapsed.”

16) Sara Roy, Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance

“The core of the book analyzes the trajectory of Israeli policy toward Gaza (with the assistance of the United States, European Union, and certain Arab states) from 2007 to the present, which deliberately undermined Gaza’s economy, transforming Palestinians from a people with political rights into a humanitarian problem.”

17) Lori Allen, A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine

“In a way, this book is an expression of my naïve astonishment at how Palestinians have been denied their freedom, so brazenly and brutally, for so long. I still ask, how can this be? A History of False Hope is another attempt to understand the intransigence of Palestinians’ unfreedom.”

 
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.