Louis Brehony, Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance (New Texts Out Now)

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Feb 19, 2024 Region
Louis Brehony, Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance (New Texts Out Now)

Louis Brehony, Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance (New Texts Out Now)

By : Louis Brehony

Louis Brehony, Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance (American University in Cairo Press, 2023).

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

Louis Brehony (LB): As a musician and someone interested in politics from an early age, I have always been interested in how these two worlds meet, particularly when music dedicates itself to the causes of revolution and liberation. I had witnessed the vibrancy of mass expression visiting socialist Cuba as a young activist and, at home, had some exposure to Irish resistance culture—but meeting Palestinian musicians around the time of the al-Aqsa intifada, something else clicked. As a listener, I became hooked and, by speaking to people like Rim Banna and Reem Talhami, came to understand how musicians’ experiences related to the deeper history of Palestinian oppression, expression, and resistance.

I felt that language had to be a central part of my practice, partly because there have been so many interesting cultural debates and arguments historically and contemporarily among Palestinians and Arab movements that had not been thoroughly addressed in Anglophone writing. These ranged from the arguments of Ghassan Kanafani and his comrades in the period of the Palestinian Revolution after 1967, to the contradictions of the Oslo “peace” process after 1993, or discussions among musicians and listeners surrounding the Arab Idol victory of Mohammed Assaf in 2013. I became interested in the cultural and social critiques of these grassroots and organized forces, framed within narratives of sumud (steadfastness), and which often lead back to the root causes of the Palestinian crisis.

Living in the “belly of the beast” in Britain—the birthplace of Sykes-Picot, the Balfour Declaration, and more than a century of backing for Zionist colonialism, regardless of which party leads in Westminster—I felt a duty to help amplify the voices of those resisting the effects of imperialism and developing alternative modes of collective expression. Going through academia and taking a more “serious” approach to research, I have tried to keep my two foundational interests central, as a committed listener and struggler alongside the Palestinian people. This is the context for a contribution that does away with any pretense at academic impartiality. Linking music to resistance and sumud means taking the side of the oppressed, a task that has never seemed more urgent.
Even with the advent of rap and other genres, Palestinian music remains grounded in orality.

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

LB: What I have tried to do in this book is to analyze differing historic locations of Palestinian exile in terms of a key issue, from which other themes emanate. So, the chapter on Kuwait and vocalist Reem Kelani asks questions about concepts of cosmopolitanism; the chapter on musical experiences in Bilad al-Sham is framed towards what I call lahaja musiqiyya, or musical dialect; when I write about Tamer Abu Ghazaleh and Palestinian musicians in Egypt, I look at the concept of repetition, in a Marxist and Saidian sense; and two chapters on Gaza are thematized around rurality and sumud respectively. For each exilic case study, the question of Palestine remains central to the practices of the musicians concerned. Many of the featured musicians from Gaza are still there.

I make the point that Palestinian Marxist analyses are overwhelmingly untapped and unrecognized in the West—the political thought of Kanafani, Habash, and Leila Khaled is avoided in respectable academia. Not only are their contributions politically pertinent and illuminating of the ways that Marxism is applied or developed in the Palestinian anticolonial context—akin to thinkers like Guevara, Cabral, Claudia Jones, and others—but they make points on culture and resistance that retain their relevance. One illustration is the call for “instruments of liberation” after 1967. Kanafani and Khaled were referring to the vanguard organizations led by communists in Vietnam, Cuba, and China, and arguing for their validity in Palestine. I thought it would be interesting to think in musical terms of how instruments of liberation might be wielded. One example is the oud, which has, but which faces a concerted campaign of Zionist appropriation, resisted by Palestinian instrumentalists, as shown in the campaign to boycott the “Israeli” Oud Festival in occupied Jerusalem.

My project also takes as its basis the musical text. This could mean a musical score by a maestro like Ruhi al-Khammash, but Palestinian music is also built around poetry. In the archetypal turathi (heritage) wedding, for example, genres like hida or ataaba provided springboards for the creative and political tenacity of zajjalin, or poet-singers, improvising poetry. These oral literatures provided the basis for many Palestinian contributions to music literature, including the hugely prolific Abdelatif al-Bargouthi, who collected the lyrics of tens of thousands of musical poems based on regional folk forms. Even with the advent of rap and other genres, Palestinian music remains grounded in orality. The book does not analyze the music primarily in technical terms—though there is some discussion on maqam—but in connection to the lyrics and their use and meaning in historical context.

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

LB: Palestinian Music in Exile is really a culmination of the work I have been involved in over the last twenty years, which has included a lot of journalistic writing on Palestine and other issues, and essays and articles on Palestinian music. Alongside research for the book, I also directed the film “Kofia: A Revolution Through Music,” about the Palestinian-Swedish band led by George Totari, best known for the song “Leve Palestina.” My recent writing has explored some of the strands referred to relatively briefly in the text, including detailed studies on exile songwriters (Totari, Zeinab Shaath, and George Kirmiz), on musical instrument making and singing in the Zionist jails (based on interviews with Fida’ al-Shaer and Asim al-Ka’abi), and analyses of Assaf and the Arab Idol phenomenon. The book offers an opportunity to place these strands in an overall context, while expanding the geographic limitations of my earlier doctoral study, which took Palestinian musical and sociopolitical experiences in Britain as the objective of study. Through this new publication, the region of near exile is given heightened attention, highlighting rarely heard accounts of Palestinian sociality in the Arab world and Turkey. 

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

LB: I have said elsewhere that I hope music-lovers will be drawn into learning about the Palestinian cause and that those already recruited to it will be able to draw on a deeper knowledge of Palestinian musical culture. University and college campuses have once again become flashpoints of political struggle and all the lessons that this throws up—not to forget, of course, the vicious Zionist attacks on openly pro-Palestine academics, with the collaboration of their institutions. This generation has so much potential and there is material in Palestinian music and its histories of expression, aesthetic revolution, and organization that can inspire all of us. During ongoing fieldwork, it has been apparent too that Palestinian displacement has created a kind of dislocation of a people from many aspects of their own history. I mention in the text that Umm Fadi, born and raised in al-Bureij camp, expressed anger that she had never heard of Jerusalem-based Sabreen band (p. 92). Others have spent years wondering who or where singer George Kirmiz was. The book can, I hope, address some of these kinds of questions among Palestinian and non-Palestinian readers.

In terms of its impact, I write at the end of the introductory chapter that, “While not overstating my own role, I hope this book contributes in even the smallest way to the musicians and music finding a wider audience.” Beyond this, I hope this work succeeds in bolstering the influence of activist intellectuals that I think stand out for their refusal to see ideas of resistance, sumud, and revolution as having somehow lost their relevance. We might mention Palestinian writers like Tahrir Hamdi, Lena Meari, Ramzy Baroud, Khaled Barakat, or Rabab Abdulhadi, who really reject the kinds of compromised analyses or blatant opportunism presented by some in the wake of 7 October resistance operations. There are also political prisoners analyzing the situation critically through culture, including Kamil Abu Hneish, whose works have been smuggled out and published in al-Hadaf. The drive to go further than what is respectable and acceptable to pro-Zionist ruling ideologies is present in the music itself. Discussed in the concluding chapter, for example, the young band Darbet Shams sing playful lullabies identifying imperialism as the root cause: 

Fly high, oh doves, over all of Bilad al-Sham

Wipe Sykes-Picot off the map

Before Bissan grows up

J: What other projects are you working on now?

LB: Readers will sense that I have a longstanding interest in Ghassan Kanafani, whose political works and fictional writings (which are also, of course, political) are quoted frequently in the book. I am not at liberty to give full details yet, but Tahrir Hamdi and I have led a project which has come to fruition in the last couple of years, involving over twenty-five other writers and translators, to make Kanafani’s political studies, journalistic articles, essays, pamphlets, interviews, and so on, more widely available. This work addresses Kanafani’s conspicuous, almost conspiratorial absence from any mention of Arab Marxism or international anti-colonial theory. 

In terms of musical projects, it may be surprising to hear that Naji al-Ali and his character Handala are the subject of an essay I am working on currently, tracing themes of music and audience through the caricatures. Palestinian music remains a key area of my research, including both historic, pre-Nakba interests and ongoing engagement with contemporary musicians. I have also been steadily developing a related area of performance research around the Syrian buzuq and recently recorded with Gazzawi oud player Reem Anbar (featured in Chapter 6) under the banner of Gazelleband. We will be touring Europe together for concerts, festivals, and book launches in the coming months.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 3: Village Dreams in Urban Gaza, pp. 98-101)

“Ana Mish Gazzawiyya”: Al-Qubeiba Village and a Journey to the Intifada

Sometimes I have a conflict within myself between Gaza and al-Qubeiba. When I talk with my friend from the West Bank, he tries to say to me “you’re a Gazzawiyya!” [Gazan]. . . . I love Gaza, I feel that it is my place, my country. . . . But no, I’m not Gazzawiyya. My village is al-Qubeiba. 

Umm Ali’s early childhood was shaped by learning that the refugee camp in Gaza was not her family’s original home, and in the mid-1980s she took part in an emotional family trip to al-Qubeiba, south of Yafa. During the uprising itself, stories and songs of historic Palestine would be central to her own involvement, as older relatives took to the streets in revolt. Umm Ali’s relationship with the village offers detail on the social activities of second-and third-generation “Gazans”; in particular it shows the role of music in shaping Palestinian consciousness in the pre-intifada years.

“It was paradise really. A dream actually,” Umm Ali says, emphasizing the natural abundance of the village compared to Gaza. As in a dream, the event came once and never happened again:

My dad and our relatives arranged a trip to our village. I think I was about seven. . . . It was easy for us to move before the intifada; it was not Israel, it was Palestine. At lunchtime, my family started to sing and my father also sang very old songs during the journey. I still like to remember that. It was a really nice time, really touching. I’d heard a lot about my village. 

We still don’t know exactly what happened in 1948. My grandfather heard what happened in the other villages, the killing, abuse of women. . . . They left thinking they would return after a week. . . . I don’t know how my dad and our relatives could look at their house and see it in someone else’s hands, not for them. And smell the oranges and lemons. . . . I don’t know how they left it without having a heart attack, wallahi.

The journey was a story in itself: a small convoy of family cars, with Umm Ali’s father, Abdel Salim, playing the role of the narrator. In her telling of the story, the village is mirage-like, holy, and it is clear that Abdel Salim had already initiated the children into viewing the land he had left in 1948, at the age of five, as their own. In the car, he led singing of “Biktub ismik ya biladi” (I write your name, my country), by Lebanese songwriter Elie Shwery, and Palestinian rebel song “ ‘Al-raba‘iyyeh.” The group continued to sing during a picnic on village land, in between eating slices of watermelon, surrounded by olive, pomegranate, and orange trees. While Umm Ali caught a bittersweet taste of an experience colored by childlike wonder, a contrasting scene is recounted by Leila Khaled, told by her mother on their arrival in Lebanon, that she must not eat the oranges: “Ours are in Haifa.” Both experiences led the young girls to challenge the loss of their land.

“Biktub ismik” extols the beauty of an unnamed country under a never-setting sun and pledges to defend its honor. It visualizes the land, home, greenery, and bridges. While Umm Ali does not mention crossing a bridge to arrive at the village, bridges are thematic to Palestinian narratives, and she would later use the metaphor to imagine her childhood involvement on the streets. The homeland is placed “above the highest bridge, the knights that enter it, and the swords are raised high.” In the context of al-Qubeiba, evacuated in 1948 by Zionist paramilitaries, the lyrics elevate the land above its conquerors and their weapons. Its final verse appears almost prophetic of the journey taken by Umm Ali in adult life:

I will wander and search the world

And cross the seven seas

And recall your days, my country

To return light to the earth.

Though the song was composed by Shwery during his time away from Lebanon in 1973, and was made a hit by singer Joseph Azhar, Umm Ali remembers learning its lyrics from Syrian actor Duraid Lahham on a tiny black and white television. 

The Israelis occupied the Golan and South Lebanon, the Sheba‘a areas, so many in the Sham countries were with Palestine. We liked that people were talking about the things happening in their own countries, as well as about Palestine, about the revolution. At that time, we were all refugees with no power. We liked that there was sympathy for us. We didn’t have a voice.

The presence of non-Palestinian singers is typical of Umm Ali’s pre-intifada reportage and of a broader post-Nakba period when Arab musicians released prominent solidarity pieces. The artists encompassed tarab, cosmopolitan Lebanese pop, and traditional references to Bilad al-Sham. Umm Ali reports a growing hunger to find local musicians later on, although she also developed an affinity for Julia Boutros and Marcel Khalife (referring to both with first-name familiarity), along with Ahmad Kaabour, Fairuz, and Umm Kulthum:

We thought many of those people had Palestinian roots because they were singing to Palestine as their country.

“‘Al-raba‘iyyeh” had been recorded by revolutionary bands, but Umm Ali had not yet discovered their cassettes, and learned the song orally from family members. At her flat in Manchester, the sisters continued this tradition in front of their children, taking it in turns to initiate verses, with a unison refrain resembling maqam bayat. The music is credited to Iraqi actor and musician Kan‘an Wadfi, with lyrics composed in colloquial Arabic by Palestinian poet and leading PLO member Said Khalil al-Muzayin (also known as Fata al-Thawra, “the boy of the revolution”), who lived in Gaza after the Nakba:

’Al-raba‘iyyeh, ‘al-raba‘iyyeh

We do not sleep when we are oppressed

The road is long for those who honor it

Oh branch-like rifle, soaked in sacrifice.

This widely circulated version was recorded in 1969 in an ensemble featuring qanun and traditional instrumental backing for a unison male chorus, and was the recording most likely to be known by Umm Ali’s parents and older siblings. “‘Al-raba‘iyyeh” had entered folkloric practices and existed in differing forms. Umm Ali and Umm Fadi remember two sets of lyrics; the first is also known by the shabab in South Lebanon (see chapter 2). The second contains anonymously composed lyrics:

We hold our Palestinian heads up high

My country, my country, we call out your name.

Other Gaza-based Palestinians recalled its ancient qualities and revolutionary certainty. Oud player Reem Anbar associated “‘Al-raba‘iyyeh” with steadfast ‘awajiz (elderly people), while, for teacher Duaa Ahmed, it symbolized “victory.”.” Umm Ali reveals that she found positivity and optimism in the spirit of the song after her ordeal under the British Home Office:

‘Al-raba‘iyyeh is a nice song when you get out of jail.

Carried by its repeated chorus, the song enabled group participation, and Umm Ali remembers the family clapping hands and joining in together when they arrived at al-Qubeiba. Likewise, the “la la la” refrain of “Biktub ismik” supported its use as an anthem at Palestinian rallies in the ghurba. In Umm Ali’s case, both songs were brought into new contexts and phases of Palestinian struggle. “‘Al-raba‘iyyeh,” sung by unison choruses at a time of rising armed struggle now entered a period and collective experience where sumud had become a central tactic, while imagery of the fida’i and rifle were interwoven with the olive branch. “Biktub ismik” was broadcast to the household via Lahham satirizing inept Arab leaders in “Kasak ya Watan” (Cheers to the country). Such leaders had already sidelined the claims of Palestinian refugees to the land but, singing songs that also carried revolutionary optimism, even after the scenes of PLO defeat in Lebanon, Umm Ali’s experience illuminated what was at stake in a shifting struggle for Palestine.

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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.

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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.