Charlotte Al-Khalili, Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

Charlotte Al-Khalili, Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

Charlotte Al-Khalili, Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

By : Charlotte Al-Khalili

Charlotte Al-Khalili, Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity (UCL Press, 2023).

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

Charlotte Al-Khalili (CAK): I started my research in anthropology around the time the Arab revolutions began. I was then researching alternative politics and decolonial thought and practices. Something radically new and different seemed to be happening in Syria with the emergence of new form of political actions, imaginations, and structures, which made me want to look at it more closely. What interested me was that it seemed that through the Syrian revolutionary experiences and events, revolution was itself being redefined or had to be redefined for it did not necessarily fit the most widespread definition—a definition that remains quite Eurocentric and is inherited from Enlightenment philosophy. 

The research began with questions such as: What new political forms of action and imagination are being invented in the Syrian uprising? What does it mean to take part in a revolution, to be forcefully displaced as a result of mass political violence, and to see one’s utopic project shattered and defeated? How does the Syrian experience redefine what a revolution is and can be in Syria and more widely? Moreover, what remains of the 2011 revolution and its defeat, and where might it be located? In other words, how can it be ethnographically seized?

What traces does a revolution, its repression, and its defeat leave on people’s bodies, selves, and social and gendered norms, as well as lifeworlds?

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

CAK: Waiting for the Revolution to End is an ethnographic study of life in the aftermath of a thwarted revolution and in the midst of war and displacement. It explores the 2011 revolution in Syria, its roots, actors, legacies, and impacts on displaced Syrians. It gives an emic description and analysis of the revolution’s evolution into an armed rebellion from 2012 onwards and a conflict that quickly became internationalized after 2013. It also depicts the main unexpected consequence of the revolution’s repression: mass displacement inside and outside the country since 2012, and thus analyses the rich nexus between revolution and displacement.

The book’s main question is: What traces does a revolution, its repression, and its defeat leave on people’s bodies, selves, and social and gendered norms, as well as lifeworlds? Such an ethnographic endeavor turns out to be an attempt to locate the silenced revolution’s traces in different domains and on various scales of Syrian lifeworlds—in other words, to draw a fragmented picture of the revolution’s afterlives through the (re)collection of linguistic, mnemonic, material, and bodily marks. It does so through the ethnographic exploration of revolutionary Syrians’ stories of involvement in the 2011 revolution and through the recounting of the transformations of their lifeworlds in displacement. This ethnography of the Syrian revolution and its defeat thus suggests the rethinking of anthropologists’ methodological tools of enquiry as well as anthropological concepts, and proposes to walk away from an ontology and epistemology inherited from the Enlightenment (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2016; Trouillot, 1995) and open up to its subjects’ conceptions and perceptions of al-ghayb (the invisible) (Bubandt et al., 2019; Mittermaier, 2019).

The book’s main argument is that despite the revolution’s overall defeat—that is, the Assad regime was not overthrown at the scale of the state—revolution survives its defeat in the present in exile. Throughout its ethnographic exploration, the Syrian revolution appears as a process that has a powerful and lasting impact on all aspects of Syrians’ lifeworld: it is an ongoing and unfinished process that has deep roots in the local and regional histories and that is conceptualized as espousing a cyclical rather than a linear temporality. In this sense, al-thawra (the revolution) does not fit classic definitions of revolution that are inherited from the European Enlightenment philosophy and historiography. Such definitions gloss over the transformative potential of apparently defeated and failed revolutions. 

The ethnographic enquiry of the Syrian revolution thus calls to an expanding of our conceptual framework and methodological tools to fully grasp what revolution, and in particular a defeated one, is and can be. Arguing that revolutionary transformations outlast revolution’s defeat, this book maps out the ruptures (intended changes) and disruptions (unexpected shifts) that the revolution engendered beyond what is usually defined as the political field. This includes within the self; in the intimate sphere of the home; in Syrians’ everyday lives, social relations, and sense of time; and in their experience of Islamic cosmology—thereby shifting the analytical focus to the revolution’s long-lasting and in-depth consequences. Revolution becomes a multi-layered and multidimensional entity: it affects Syrian lifeworlds in all domains and scales. These very transformations are themselves being interpreted in ways that evolve as Syrians’ theorizations, experiences, and imaginations of al-thawra are themselves being transformed. This book thus has two overall aims: the location of the traces of the early stage of the 2011 revolution through my interlocutors’ narratives, memories, activities, and artefacts; and the mapping of the transformations that revolutionary moment, space, and experience create in exile.

Waiting for the Revolution to End ultimately offers a reflection on the ways in which anthropology can study a defeated revolution in displacement—a revolution whose very existence is contested, for it did not reach its primary objective of toppling the existing regime. It proposes that an anthropology of defeat has to simultaneously be an anthropology of traces (Napolitano, 2015): an anthropology of defeat becomes a tracing of life in the aftermaths of mass political violence, a tracing of the erasure of revolutionary utopia since there has been a partial deletion of the Syrian 2011 revolution. The book can thus be read as an archive of the invisibilized Syrian revolution and of its non-violent defeated actors: those who opposed the militarization of the revolution and the Islamist and jihadi factions that appeared on the ground afterwards. It is also an invitation to look at the realities of revolutionary actors and subjects that often appear on the margins, for example pious and conservative middle-aged housewives. Moreover, and maybe most importantly, through the act of showing what is being erased and forgotten, it suggests to enhance and broaden the collective political imagination in learning from Syrian revolutionary political experience.

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

CAK: Prior to this research project I conducted fieldwork in Siberia, where I looked at the relation between religious and political things in a post-revolutionary context focusing on repression of shamanism during the Soviet era and the dealing with murdered shamans in present time. The research focused on the political and shamanic discourses around these violent deaths and mass political violence since the 1930s—including displacement of dissidents to the small town where I conducted research. The two projects thus explore political violence in revolutionary and post-revolutionary contexts albeit in very different settings. The research focus of the book also departs from my prior research in philosophy that focused on alternative and decolonial politics and thoughts.

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

CAK: I am hoping for a readership as wide as possible to read Waiting for the Revolution to End. I have written it as an ethnographic archive of the Syrian revolution that brings long ethnographic descriptions and testimonies alongside anthropological theory. Although it remains an academic book, it can be read by non-specialists and will hopefully be read by Syrian revolutionaries themselves. I hope that they will feel that the book does justice to their experiences and conceptualizations of the revolution. My wish is also for the book to inspire students and scholars of revolution and political violence. I hope it opens up a discussion about the theoretical and methodological tools available to anthropologists to research the aftermaths of mass political violence and, more generally, events and phenomena that have happened elsewhere and else-when. Most importantly, I hope that this book will render Syrian revolutionaries and their projects more visible. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

CAK: I am currently working on two research projects. The first is on the material traces of multiple forms of political violence, its religious understandings, and the everyday effects of polycrisis among impoverished communities in and around Beirut. The second is on the Assad carceral system, its gendered experience, and the legal potential of survivors’ testimonies. These initiatives depart from my work towards understanding the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying political failure and its consequences. The first project is based on twelve months of fieldwork in Beirut, while the second is being developed in collaboration with Syrian former political detainees and aims to compile a collective volume of auto-ethnographic texts.

In addition, I am in the process of designing a research program that proposes a comparative anthropology of the afterlives of revolution and war, bringing together Syria and Ukraine. It will study the past revolution, ongoing war, and forced displacement to Europe. The aim of the program is to study political defeats, religious understandings of them, future aspirations, and everyday impacts in displacement. It also brings to the fore epistemic questions about anthropology’s methods: how does one research what has passed, disappeared, been destroyed or erased? How does one study what is no longer observable or accessible?

 

Excerpt from the book (from pp. 1-3)

‘Look! All the paths are closed!’ Hanan tells me, pointing at the pattern made by the grounds of the coffee we have just drunk from small white cups decorated with a blue eye. She continues to lament while turning her cup in her right hand: ‘Everything is closing down, everything is dark. There is no hope! There is nothing good coming. There isn’t even a small path!’ It is early morning in the autumn of 2015; the two children are still asleep on the floor of the living room, undisturbed by our morning coffee reading. Hanan has been obsessed with coffee reading for the past couple of weeks as she is looking for signs and answers to the conundrum of her future. Will she stay in Turkey? Will she go back to her parents’ village in Syria? Or will she cross into Europe?

We turn to look at Dina’s cup. Hanan asks me what I see in it. I see a lot of people running towards a place that is white and open. Bearing in mind her recent preoccupations and the news, I suggest that the space is an open road for refugees to Europe, but Hanan does not agree. She sees a lot of people standing together, which to her represents the protest we are attending later that day. ‘The white opening is the positive outcome of today’s protest’, she says, pointing to the part of the cup that is clear of coffee grounds. This references the weekly protest in which we participate, replicas of those that used to occur in the early days of the revolution in Syria. Hanan also sees two people hugging one another behind a dark shape. She reads the same shape at the bottom of the cup after pressing her thumb on it, saying that they are friends reunited after a long time apart.

Hanan, a former civil servant in her fifties, and I are living at Dina’s, a former teacher in her forties. Hanan is a Kurdish woman who comes from a small village near the Turkish border but used to live in a city in the north of Syria. Dina, although originally from eastern Syria, used to work in a city in the centre of the country. Hanan shares Dina’s room and I sublet the second room of the apartment in Gaziantep, a city near the Turkish–Syrian border. The two boys sleeping on the floor of the living room, aged 10 and 12, are Dina’s nephews, recently arrived from their war-torn city in eastern Syria, where the situation is deteriorating. Their mother sent them to stay with her sister while they wait for visas to join their father in Europe.

For a week I have been woken by Hanan’s early Skype calls with relatives and friends, either in Europe or in Syria, and daily we drink and read – literally ‘open’ (iftah) – coffee together. Since the summer of 2015, the number of Syrians fleeing to Europe has increased greatly, and every day she reports that a relative, friend, or acquaintance is on her way to, or has arrived in, Europe; this paralleled the opening of the ‘Balkan road’. For Hanan, however, leaving the border town where we live means abandoning her country and, most importantly, giving up hope that the Assad regime will eventually fall and the revolution succeed. ‘As long as I can stay here I will, but as soon as the border opens I will be on my way home’, she once told me, referring to her in-between situation. In order to be able to stay in Turkey, however, she must find a job, since she will not be able to survive for long on the modest savings she brought out of Syria when she fled.

We follow Hanan to the kitchen where she elaborates on her reading by flipping the cup in the saucer above the sink. She observes the designs again, but she cannot identify any relevant pattern so we decide to leave it there for the day. In this morning’s cup, rather than offering direction or wide openings as it does sometimes, the coffee has just shown that the future is dark and without much hope. ‘Let’s see what we have tomorrow,’ she concludes as we go back to the living room. By the time we finish our morning ritual it is already late but the boys are still asleep and will probably not wake before the early afternoon as they usually go to bed in the early morning hours.

Smuggled through the border, which had been closed for several months, they arrived with three of Dina’s siblings and now spend most of their days indoors, watching the news, archive videos of the revolution, or television series on Arabic channels. They were not admitted to school, as they do not have a kimlik, a document all Syrians in Turkey must have but which is no longer distributed in the city in which we live. Their lives have thus become little more than enforced and indeterminate waiting, as they do not know how long it will take for their visas to be delivered. Their everyday is shared between memories of the past and Skype or WhatsApp calls with their parents in Syria and Europe respectively. When I am home, I often find them watching videos of the revolution’s first protests, one of their (and their aunt’s) favourite pastimes – along with participating in the weekly protests – or trying to find an adequate connection so they can speak with their mother and younger siblings in Syria.

(…)

When I left Gaziantep in autumn 2019, the Syrian revolution was largely overshadowed by descriptions and analyses of what was called a ‘civil war’, a ‘never-ending conflict’ and a ‘humanitarian crisis’. In this book I invite the reader to go back to a different timespace. This is an ethnography of a clearly bounded period of the Syrian revolution and its associated displacement: a moment that has now disappeared, a moment characterised by hope and a sense of community among Syrian revolutionaries and the displaced. The fieldwork for this research is inscribed in a context of ongoing war inside Syria and displacement of its people to neighbouring countries. It cut across different phases of the revolutionary process: from a peaceful revolution (2011) to a proxy war and mass displacement (2015), and from local victories of the FSA and the establishment of liberated areas (2012) to the regime’s taking over most liberated areas (2016). This moving landscape forms both the ethnographic and analytical background of the book.

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.