Marjorie N. Feld, Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (New Texts Out Now)

Marjorie N. Feld, Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (New Texts Out Now)

Marjorie N. Feld, Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (New Texts Out Now)

By : Marjorie N. Feld

Marjorie N. Feld, Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (New York University Press, 2024).

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

Marjorie Feld (MF): I began this book eight years ago at the intersection of my observations within the American Jewish community and my own scholarly interests. I had long seen American Jewish community leaders and laypeople marginalize American Jews who dissented from unconditional support of Israel. In research for my book on American Jews and apartheid, I interviewed activists who noted their discomfort with this support dating back to the 1960s. When I returned to the archives to do research for this book, I found an unbroken continuum of criticism of American Zionism dating back to the late nineteenth century. In Threshold, I explain the worldviews and perspectives of critics of American Zionism and chart their courses in US Jewish communal life.

The book looks at how and why these individuals chose to dissent from American Zionism, and how the broader American Jewish community responded to their dissent.

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

MF: Each chapter analyzes a distinct time and a group of historical actors, American Jews who cared deeply about American Jewish life and were also critics of American Zionism for distinct reasons. The book looks at how and why these individuals chose to dissent from American Zionism, and how the broader American Jewish community responded to their dissent. For example, some early twentieth-century American Jews, the subjects of Threshold’s first chapter, feared that Zionism would make all American Jews appear more loyal to a nation that was not the United States. Amidst the xenophobia and racism of Jim Crow America, they feared antisemitic accusations of dual loyalties and rejected Zionism in that spirit. American Jewish Zionist leaders of that era also deeply feared antisemitism, and worried that any divisions within the community would create vulnerability and threaten Jewish integration into the white mainstream.

The subjects of the second chapter, liberal and left anticommunist Jews at midcentury, saw Zionism as diminishing the vibrancy of Jewish life outside of Israel, and also diminishing the otherwise liberal values of American Jews. The immense losses of the Holocaust made these critics acutely aware of the need to find safe places for Jewish life; they disagreed that a Jewish state would ensure Jewish safety.

Within the liberation movements of the 1950s onwards, anti-colonialist Arab, Palestinian, and Black American leaders and their allies began criticizing Israel’s settler colonialism, and some American Jews were open to those lessons. These, along with the antiwar movement, are the subjects of the book’s final two chapters. Leaders criticized Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and then its post-1967 occupation of Palestine; they feared for the directions of American Jewish life and the isolation that resulted from the community’s unqualified support of Israel. The so-called “consensus” on Zionism isolated Jews from progressive currents and movements in the twentieth century and into our own.

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

MF: My previous books looked at progressive movements—for public health, immigrant and labor and women’s rights, and against South African Apartheid. As a US social historian, I have always examined American Jews’ relationships to these movements. This book is the logical evolution of my scholarly interests, in many ways, because the American Jewish community’s fealty to Israel has prevented meaningful engagement with liberation movements like anti-apartheid.This book is as rigorously researched as my past books and is also similarly grounded in storytelling and historical analysis.

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

MF: Even before the global Zionist movement reached the United States, American Jews disagreed about what role Jewish nationalism should play in American Jewish life. Dissent over Zionism began within the American Jewish world. Before the Holocaust, mainstream Jewish leaders accused Jewish critics of Zionism of antisemitism and self-hatred because they equated Jewish safety exclusively with Israel. 

Especially after the horrors of the Holocaust, American Jews felt that Jewish unity was of paramount importance. This was part of what motivated Jewish leaders to greet critics of American Zionism with hostility, removing their funding and marginalizing them. Zionism mobilized Jews, made them visible as many moved into suburban white America; it set them apart as a distinct community. The voices of the critics I study—many of whom argued that unqualified support for Israel made Jews and all of us less safe—were not heard or were actively silenced. 

I hope that all who read my book recognize that we are living in just the latest chapter of Jewish dissent from American Zionism. The current protests have the potential to undo some of the isolation experienced within American Jewish life, as American Jewish critics of Israel’s devastation in Gaza (including activists who are Jews of Color and LGBTQ Jews) are joining with Palestinian, Black, and Arab Americans and others in fighting for Palestinian and Jewish freedom. As with many past critics of Zionism, they know that Jewish and Palestinian liberation have always been interconnected. I hope that this book sparks earnest conversations about the cost of the American Jewish “consensus” on Israel. I hope too that welcoming diverse perspectives on Israel and Palestine opens up broader currents of inclusion, in the American Jewish world and beyond.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MF: I have in mind a new project about sustainable American Jewish farming, its role in the American Jewish environmental movement, and how these activists are addressing climate change while also innovating Jewish ritual life. I remain interested in how American Jews join global movements—climate justice movements are particularly urgent right now—and offer alternatives: to traditional, mainstream Jewish life, and to the (unsustainable) industrial food system.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 3, “Israel—Right or Wrong”—Anticolonialism, Freedom Movements, and American Jewish Life, pp. 102-106)

The story of global currents of anticolonialism and freedom movements are central to the history of American Zionism and the politics of American Jewish life regarding criticism of Zionism after 1967. Before 1967, many mainstream American Jewish leaders supported Black nationalist and Black Power movements. Even Jewish leaders who did not fully support these liberation movements compared them to Zionism as they sought to make sense of Black Americans’ struggles for autonomy and empowerment. In 1966, for example, Boston’s Jewish Advocate reported, “An [O]rthodox rabbinical leader warned that the slogan ‘[B]lack [P]ower’ and the reported deterioration in Negro-Jewish relations should not discourage rabbis from encouraging support of civil rights programs.” The article noted that Jewish community leaders expressed understanding of the need for Black Power, as they understood that “progress toward the goal of full equality must be accelerated dramatically.” Still, these leaders hoped that white people would be included in these coalitions for change. Yet Rabbi Emanuel Rackman of Yeshiva University went on record as saying that Jews and other whites should not “exaggerate” the fact that Black people wanted to “run their own movements.” “Such statements,” he believed, were made “in the same voice as Zionists in Israel, who have complained that American Zionists are interfering in their affairs.”

In these same years, as some American Jewish Zionists compared Black nationalism to Zionism to better understand it, the rise in Palestinian solidarity among Black nationalists and civil rights activists only widened the gap between American Jews and African Americans. This rise also contributed greatly to the distancing of American Jews from progressive coalitions, such as those fighting for civil rights.

Not all Black leaders took these positions. In the mid-1970s, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin led an organization called Black Americans to Support Israel Committee (BASIC), with the support of two dozen significant figures in its full-page advertisement in the New York Times. Historian Brenda Gayle Plummer also writes that a “Black-Jewish In- formational Center with headquarters in New York City . . . channeled favorable reports about Israel to the [B]lack press.” The Black-Jewish Information Center, which was managed by Richard Cohen Associates, a public relations firm that worked with major Jewish organizations, reprinted articles mostly from Jewish publications that celebrated moments of unity between Black and Jewish leaders. The agency focused mainly, and predictably, on Israel. It released a statement when the Histadrut, Israel’s General Federation of Jewish Labor, honored Black civil rights and labor leader Robert Powell, for example. It sought to smooth over tensions, downplaying Israel’s economic ties to South Africa. This was an uphill battle, however, as unqualified support for Israel diminished among Black activists amid Israel’s shifting position on the world stage.

Indeed, in taking public positions of support for Palestinians in the 1960s and 1970s, many Black leaders passed the threshold of acceptable public dissent on Zionism and Israel. Zionist Jewish leaders increasingly saw African American criticism of Zionism as a threat, especially when some Black Americans spoke of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as representative of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Often Jewish leaders attributed Black solidarity with Palestinians to “Arab propaganda” and felt doubly targeted as white people in thinking of Black national- ism as antiwhite. Alternately, Jewish leaders attributed Black solidarity with Palestinians to “Black antisemitism,” a phrase identified by scholars as a pernicious, racist concept intended to distance white Jews from Black liberation.

Scholars write about the National Conference for New Politics, held in Chicago in September 1967, as a turning point for Jewish left activists. The conference tried to bring together antiwar liberals, New Left radicals, and African American activists. At the conference, a group of Black radical organizations proposed thirteen resolutions, most of them focused on “white support for [B]lack self-determination and political power.” One resolution focused on condemnation of “the imperialistic Zionist war.” Many self-identified Jewish activists heard this strong language as a threat, perhaps even an ultimatum. Even were they critical of both Israel and Zionism, they now felt that they could not balance those ideas withcommitments to the New Left and anticolonialist activism. The vision of Israel with which they lived, that they had been taught, did not align with the language of imperialism, and many walked out of the conference to demonstrate their rejection of the resolution’s ideas.

As Israel and Palestinian rights emerged as prominent issues among Black and Arab American activists, these issues complicated progressive coalitions between African Americans and American Jews. This was certainly true after the National Black Political Convention in March 1972, where a group of delegates described Israel as “expansionist,” condemned its work with imperialist powers, and called on the United States to end its support for Israel. Tensions rose still more in 1979 after President Carter appointed Andrew Young as America’s first Black ambassador to the United Nations. After his meeting with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Young faced calls to resign from many mainstream Jewish leaders. That same year, when two hundred Black leaders of a diverse array of Black organizations, including the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, met to talk about calls for Andrew Young’s resignation, they drew attention to Israel’s close relationship with apartheid South Africa and voiced full support for efforts by Black leaders to support peace by talking to the PLO. Black leaders called this their “declaration of independence on the Middle East issue,” and they aligned that sentiment with strong criticism of the positions of Jewish leaders that were increasingly “contrary to the best interests of the [B]lack community.”

A draft of the document, one ultimately not released, named the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Jewish Committee as three Jewish organizations that had “opposed the interests of the [B]lack community” in court cases over affirmative action. Black leaders also labeled Jewish contributions to civil rights “patronizing” because the contributions were made “pending clarification of how the beneficiaries, who solicit them, feel about them.” After Black leaders announced that the Jewish Defense League had used “threats of physical violence” against them, Nathan Perlmutter, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, denounced the threats as “wrong” and meriting “condemnation.” Perlmutter cited Jews’ “open record in [sic] behalf of civil rights and the betterment of the human condition.” He wrote,

“We apologize to no one.” The headline on the front page of the Michigan Chronicle, a Black newspaper, was “Jewish Leader Tells Blacks: No Apologies.” 

In sum, anti-Zionism in the American left grew out of a new global mindedness and global solidarity among Black, Palestinian, and Arab activists: opposition to state-sanctioned racism and oppression at home and Cold War allegiances abroad, including America’s involvement in Southeast Asia and in Israel and Israel’s involvement in Algeria and South Africa. These new Cold War alliances served as an opportunity for mainstream acceptance and even power for Jews, and strong support for Israel proved central to their gradual withdrawal from some aspects of the domestic civil rights agenda.

As political scientist Adolph L. Reed Jr. noted, the focus on “Black antisemitism” seemed distracting to those who felt strongly that the xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism from the Right (for example, from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists) posed an actual and far more formidable threat to minority groups such as African Americans, immigrants, and Jews. Certainly there were examples of antisemitism within civil rights, Black Power, Arab American, and other movements. By focusing so powerfully on “Black antisemitism,” though, American Jews gave themselves permission to withdraw support from positions that challenged the racist status quo and thus their own emerging, per- haps vulnerable positions as powerful figures in American life. Linking much of the criticism of Israel to antisemitism and to Black and Arab American anticolonialist critiques under the disingenuous categories of “Black antisemitism” and “Arab propaganda,” American Jewish leaders also reinforced their whiteness and thus their political influence.

Unwittingly or not, then, some Jewish leaders in this way contributed to the backlash against liberation movements. At a 1979 meeting, Black leaders took note of American Jews’ new role, leaving behind their work for Black equality and joining others as “apologists for the racial status quo.” Jewish leaders’ policing criticism of Zionism and Israel was one component of this new role. Historically, debates over Jewish non- and anti-Zionism took place across the political spectrum, as Zionist critiques had been leveled by elite Reform Jews through the 1940s and secular Jews on the left through the 1960s. After 1967, as American Jewish leaders gained power and stature, they conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism and also the diverse historical, political, and intellectual strands of the Left as a singular threat and so some joined the broader attacks on the left in the culture wars. This stance allowed them to demonize the movements that were providing activists around the world with a critical view of Israel and other colonial powers.

 

Note: Also see Connections Episode 94: American Jewish Critics of Zionism with Marjorie N. Feld (28 May)

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.