Rusha Latif, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

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Jan 25, 2024 Egypt
Rusha Latif, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

Rusha Latif, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

By : Rusha Latif

Rusha Latif, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (American University in Cairo Press, 2022).

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

Rusha Latif (RL): I felt called to pursue this project shortly after the January 25 revolution’s start. Not only was I drawn in by the moving scenes of my fellow Egyptians stepping into their power, but as a grad student at UC Davis studying social movements, I was also struck by explanations for how the eruption happened. The media narrative at the time was that this was a spontaneous, leaderless uprising, powered by social media. But much was also said about it being youth-led. The tension between these descriptions fascinated me: How could it be both leaderless and youth-led? Taking this question up as my research, I set out for Cairo. A few conversations with activists upon my arrival confirmed there was indeed some planning for January 25, but it was not until I met with a leading leftist activist that I learned the details. She described a brilliant secret strategy her group, the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), had executed on January 25 to draw the masses onto the streets. It was exciting and validating to hear this remarkable story, because it confirmed I was right to question the “spontaneous” and “leaderless” narrative. With this backstory—which is surprisingly still mostly unknown today—I realized I had the starting point for an important study on Egypt’s revolutionaries. 

I had no intention of writing a book when I first began this project. What was supposed to be a master’s thesis ended up being more like a dissertation in scope, depth, and length. There was no question I had to complete the journey to publication: the story of the movement’s young protagonists could not be forgotten. It would have been a disservice not only to the Egyptian revolution but to movements everywhere that stand to learn so much from this experience. With the revolution’s defeat, this study was all the more urgent. These activists deserved their own book, since it is possible that without their efforts, we might not have an Egyptian revolution or even an Arab Spring to speak of today.
Tahrir’s Youth offers insight into the political generation of Arab youth that emerged in 2010 and altered the trajectory of the region as they fought for a new world.

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

RL: Tahrir’s Youth is an activist ethnography that explores the themes of leadership and organization in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, focusing on the RYC, the first and arguably most significant front born of the nationwide revolt. Forged in Tahrir Square during the eighteen-day uprising, the RYC comprised the political youth groups most active on the ground leading up to January 25 and whose collaboration had begun long before. Together, they strategized for the day of protest and were key in driving the revolutionary movement that ensued, especially as it unfolded in Tahrir Square and Cairo. The book challenges the notion that the uprising was purely spontaneous and leaderless. Moving beyond these reductive tropes, it takes for granted that there were, in fact, leaders in the Egyptian revolution—as in any movement—and instead focuses on understanding their agency: what enabled it, what constrained it, and ultimately what prevented them from achieving a winning outcome for their movement.

The book emphasizes the narratives of ten RYC leaders who reflect the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ideological leanings of the youth activists who participated. Anthropologically, it studies the revolutionary process through the leaders’ personal stories, political trajectories, and subjective transformations, taking into consideration questions of gender, class, religion, and ideology. Sociologically, it examines the horizontal leadership and organizing processes they engaged in—first as an informal network, then as the RYC—as they tried to direct and sustain the movement, with special attention to the internal and external challenges they faced along the way. To illuminate this experience, the book draws on social movement theories related to leadership and the classical Marxist theoretical literature on revolutionary organizing. It argues that, as the closest thing the revolution had to a vanguard organization, the RYC deserves our attention for the lessons it offers in revolutionary leadership and the viability of participatory democracy as its praxis—not just for movements in the Arab region but for struggles across the world.

An in-depth exploration of the motives, hopes, strategies, successes, failures, and disillusionments of the revolution’s leaders, Tahrir’s Youth offers insight into the political generation of Arab youth that emerged in 2010 and altered the trajectory of the region as they fought for a new world. 

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

RL: Born of an eleven-year labor of love, Tahrir’s Youth is not only my first book but my first academic publication. It grew out of a longstanding interest I had in social change—how it happens, what impedes it—and my search for how I might help effect it. This journey started for me several years earlier in Egypt, where I had moved to reconnect with my heritage, after completing my undergraduate studies. Through my engagement with ordinary Egyptians and my daily exposure to the dire socioeconomic conditions they were forced to endure, I became socially conscious and asked myself what it would take to shift the world toward meaningful change. This experience set me on an academic trajectory through which I was introduced to the study of social movements and that, to my surprise, would eventually bring me back full circle to Egypt—intellectually and emotionally, and in the most exhilarating and unexpected circumstances—to study a revolutionary outbreak in my country.

J: What was your experience like conducting this research? 

RL: It was both challenging and life-changing. What made conducting this research such a challenge was not just the volatile revolutionary environment but also my complex positionality in the field. I traveled to Cairo naively thinking it would be easy to carry out this research because of my insider status as an Egyptian, but it turned out I was not as Egyptian as I had thought. I was a young, first-generation Egyptian-American/Muslim-American hijabi with provincial Nile Delta origins and a middle-class, suburban California upbringing. Tahrir made me get clear about this; it forced me to unpack my identity in relation to this space and its revolutionaries, because there was no comprehending either without understanding who I was.

That is the story behind my extensive methods chapter, “Encountering Revolution: Expectations and Reality.” It was the first chapter I wrote after my 2011 fieldwork. As I started working on it, I decided to be honest and vulnerable about my experience. I had to write this chapter to find my story within this larger story of revolutionary struggle, to process everything it stirred up for me, to understand why I was there and my responsibility toward the revolutionaries and their movement as a researcher. I am glad I wrote this chapter first because it helped me find my voice and set the tone for the entire study.

My original audience for this chapter was just my advisors; at the time I wrote it, I had no intention of publishing a book. When this became the plan, I hesitated to include this chapter, knowing academics typically do not write this honestly about their fieldwork experiences. In the end, I chose to keep it, in the hopes that readers might take it as a model for how to practice intersectional reflexivity as a researcher and show up authentically in their work.

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

RL: I wrote Tahrir’s Youth with several audiences in mind. I hope the book will strike a chord with general readers, as well as those who followed the Egyptian revolution closely. At the forefront of my mind were the children who lived through the events—those who accompanied their families to Tahrir or watched events unfold on their TV screens. I wanted to preserve this memory for them and for future generations of young Egyptians who might take the baton. I hope this book will help them make sense of this experience and find their place in this unfinished story—the ending of which will likely be theirs to tell.

Tahrir’s Youth sits at the intersection of three main fields: Middle Eastern studies, youth studies, and social movement and revolution studies. With respect to the latter, the book makes a particularly important contribution to the understudied field of movement leadership—in fact, it is in part a response to a call in the literature for more empirical case studies. The book also engages with other fields, such as gender studies and urban studies. Naturally, I hope it will appeal to scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate students in all these fields and make its way into their courses. I would also be pleased if the methodology chapter were adopted in qualitative research courses and possibly courses on Arab-American/Muslim-American identity and experience. In all of these settings, the book should generate rich discussion.

Above all, I hope this book will resonate with activists, starting with the January 25 revolutionaries. I wrote it as an act of solidarity with them, first and foremost. Not only did I want to document their story for the historical record, but I also wanted to produce knowledge that would be useful in their ongoing struggle. If it contributes to broader conversations in the activist community—among Egyptian and Arab Spring revolutionaries and activists from other movements—this would be the ultimate reward. Tahrir’s Youth is a tool for us to think with, to problem-solve with. My hope is that the book’s insights help us imagine new modes of organizing to achieve revolutionary social change in the twenty-first century.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

RL: My next project engages with important questions raised by Tahrir's Youth. Through their experience trying to remake their country, Egypt’s revolutionaries have given us a gift: they revealed the limitations of existing theories for how to successfully carry out revolutions and the need to conceive of new ones. The many mass protest movements that have erupted across the globe since the Egyptian revolution have also demonstrated this. How might activists go beyond disrupting the status quo through protest to inducing structural change and transforming the social order? How do we think anew about questions of movement leadership, organization, and structure—beyond the binary of verticalism and horizontalism—and create enduring movements capable of surmounting the forces of neoliberalism, imperialism, and authoritarianism? I am invested in exploring the full complexity of this challenge alongside activists in an effort to envision new, creative pathways forward.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 4, “Youth Activists and Revolutionary Praxis,” pp. 109-110, 141-143)

It was just after sundown on February 11, 2011, when the end finally came, and rather swiftly. In a breaking televised address that lasted an entire thirty-two seconds, an ashen and grim-faced Vice President Omar Suleiman unceremoniously announced the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, jolting Tahrir Square and Egypt’s streets into wild jubilation. What just less than a month earlier had been a distant, almost absurd dream for many of Egypt’s young activists was now real: a popular revolutionary struggle had erupted—in part at their instigation—and forced the exit of the deeply entrenched dictator, effectively ending his suffocating thirty-year reign. How did this happen? How did what was expected to be a modest day of protest on January 25, 2011, turn into a millions-strong popular revolt that ousted the seemingly indomitable leader in a mere eighteen days?

Focusing on the period stretching from the weeks immediately preceding January 25 through February 11, this chapter examines the revolutionary movement process as it evolved from the perspective of the youth activists profiled in the previous chapter, who were deeply engaged in it as organizers. This process was characterized by a series of ups and downs determined by a fluid, changing reality that emerged with activist agitation, state reactions, the people's shifting perceptions and responses, and global solidarity and sympathy for their cause. This complex process unfolded in phases after critical junctures, which forced the actors involved to constantly negotiate and act around two recurring, corresponding questions: “What is happening?” and “How should we act?” The what question captures their evolving understanding of the emerging, transforming sociopolitical resistance phenomenon on the one hand, and their constant assessment of its revolutionary potential on the other. The how question refers to their attempts to figure out how they should respond and carry the resistance forward to affect the change they desired. The question of how in turn required them to consider who should be involved and in what configuration to ensure their project’s legitimacy and ultimate success. Also critical to this process was the question of where—the geographical spaces in which they should act to maximize their effectiveness.

Ultimately, what the activists were trying to figure out is what role they should play, if any, as leaders in this nascent revolutionary struggle. In this sense, the implicit questions they engaged with were no different from those that occupied celebrated revolutionary strategists from the Marxist tradition. These questions were specifically concerned with the extent to which leaders should mediate the people’s processes of spontaneity and consciousness to direct their action and secure their sustained participation in the resistance—the latter, of course, being crucial to the success of the revolutionary struggle. Wary of the ephemeral nature of spontaneous uprisings, Vladimir Lenin, perhaps the first to elaborately conceptualize what leadership should look like in revolutionary movements, argued that the masses needed guidance and leadership from professional revolutionaries tied to a highly disciplined and bureaucratically centralized vanguard organization. He insisted that without an organized intervention infusing them with revolutionary consciousness and orienting their activity toward overturning the system, the masses would remain short-sighted in their demands for change and fall short of abolishing the status quo. Lenin’s contemporary Rosa Luxemburg, on the other hand, had much more faith in the revolutionary will of the masses; she believed they were capable of achieving a radical revolutionary class consciousness on their own and becoming their own leaders through their engagement with the struggle.

How did these ideas play out among Egypt’s youth activists and shape their agency during the eighteen-day uprising? To what extent were the masses who participated in the 2011 protests able to self-organize and maintain their revolutionary consciousness without the help of an organized body leading them? Were the people capable of evolving from their spontaneous action into a revolutionary class on their own? Was it possible for the activists to lead without stifling the spontaneity, radicalism, and creative energy of the masses?

[...]

February 4–11: Leadership, Representation, and Voice in the Escalation of Resistance

The Battle of the Camel set the stage for the youth leaders’ repositioning and later maneuvering in the square. Up to this point, the young organizers behind January 25 had avoided the limelight, opting instead to try to direct and support the movement as it unfolded, seemingly organically, from behind the scenes. Apart from the fact that they were not convinced it was their place, they did this because they wanted to preserve the popular ownership of the revolution, which prided itself on being leaderless. Stepping to the forefront as leaders, they believed, would make it easier to discredit and delegitimize the movement and diminish from the people’s sense of agency and ownership. When I asked whether they felt like they could have taken a stronger, more visible lead, Zyad from the ElBaradei Campaign told me:

Look, it was a very difficult question. At the time we felt that if we announced ourselves as the leaders, this might make it easier to attack the square, because they’d say, “They’re just doing this because they want to be the leaders. They’re not doing this so things will be better.” So this might have weakened the situation in the square. The most important thing for us was that the square remained unified, so it was more important to play the role of leadership, directing them without saying you were the leaders, so you wouldn’t be attacked, so they wouldn’t discredit you politically.

This was an attitude youth activists maintained throughout the eighteen-day uprising. Promoting the idea of leaderlessness and keeping quiet about their own role was not just an ideological decision based on a rejection of the country’s political culture of the male, charismatic leader, but also a strategic decision to protect themselves against repression and to prevent the regime from mischaracterizing and delegitimizing the movement as orchestrated by a tiny subversive group.

But the lack of an official leading revolutionary body soon became problematic; the Battle of the Camel prompted a group of opposition figures and other prominent Egyptians to enter into negotiations with state officials over a settlement to end the political crisis. They called themselves “The Council of Wise Men”—note the conspicuous absence of women and youth—and positioned themselves as a collective that could rise above the fray and mediate between protesters and the government. They leaned toward a compromise in which Mubarak would immediately hand over his powers to his newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman for the duration of Mubarak’s term. For the youth activists who planned January 25, these developments showed that it was necessary to form a revolutionary organization that spoke to the public with legitimacy from the square and expressed its radical position to protect it from being sold out by the traditional politicians, many of whom had joined the movement late. As Mostafa of the Youth for Justice and Freedom Movement put it:

After the victory of January 28 and the start of the sit-in, it [a discussion] started that we must have an entity that could win the confidence and trust of the people. There had to be a transformation from [ad hoc] coordination to a coordinating entity, from just coordination among different groups to a body that expressed itself from behind a name.

What unfolded thereafter among the various opposition actors was a process of figuring out how to carry this movement forward in the absence of a unified leadership. Essentially, the questions they engaged with in this process were these: As we attempt to delegitimize and oust the current regime, how should we compensate for the absence of a leading revolutionary body in order to see this process through? What configuration of opposition actors might the people accept as the carrier of their collective will and support as the representatives speaking and working legitimately on their behalf to complete the revolution? How can we secure the sustained commitment of the masses to this revolutionary resistance?

 

Figure 4. Activists raise the first RYC banners from their stage in Tahrir Square shortly before announcing the formation of the coalition. Photograph by Hossam El-Hamalawy.

The Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), known in Arabic as I’tilaf Shabab al-Thawra, formally announced itself in a press conference on February 6 (see figure 4). The first revolutionary organization to emerge from the square, it was essentially the institutionalization of the informal network of ideologically diverse youth factions that had been coordinating the popular mobilization long before January 25, which included the liberal-leaning April 6 Youth Movement, the left-leaning Youth for Justice and Freedom Movement, the liberal-leaning ElBaradei Campaign, young members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberal Democratic Front Party, the leftist Nasserist pan-Arab Dignity Party, as well as several independent activists. The RYC was launched with the express purpose of making it clear to the public and government that those who were meeting with Omar Suleiman and other government officials did not represent the square—incidentally, the famous declamation “la tafawud qabl al-rahil” (no negotiations before the departure) was their innovation—and to declare that despite the deadly assault, they would continue to occupy the square until their demands were met. According to Zyad, “The people started to leave, so someone had to say, so that the square would continue, someone had to say that we were going to carry on. In the middle of the attacks, we said no, we are going to complete this [so that the people keep on going].”
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.