Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon (New Texts Out Now)

Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon (New Texts Out Now)

Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon (New Texts Out Now)

By : Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman

Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon (Syracuse University Press, 2024).

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

Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman (MA & MH): We set out to write an oral history of the Lebanese Civil War that specifically highlighted and underlined the multiple roles and experiences of women. Too often women are left out of histories of war. What the War Left BehindWomen’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon is the eventual shape of one part of this larger history project about the war. As we were preparing for this interview, we were reminded once again that the war we talk about in this book never really ended. We have sat down several times to work on this interview; in one version of it we talk about the technological attack that killed and injured thousands of people in one day, and then another few weeks later, it is experiencing air strikes, a ground war, and murder of civilians, day after day. So though perhaps this was not an explicit reason that we began working on this book, the reality of war in Lebanon is something everyone lives with, and we wanted the experiences of women—especially women of the resistance—to be more visible and well known.

Also, Malek is an oral historian and wanted to address a gap in the scholarship. There are so few oral histories of Lebanese, Palestinian, and other Arab women, and few works focused on the lives and work of ordinary women who played such a crucial part of the resistance. He approached Michelle, whose work on literary works and translation offered another perspective to the project. Working together, we developed what we hope is a fresh approach to the history of Lebanon, this war, and women who lived and struggled there.

It not only is built around the stories of specific women, it also deals what they were most interested in talking about.

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

MA & MH: This oral history of the Lebanese Civil War highlights the stories of eight women who are “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” Based on our interviews with around fifty women, we put this book together in conversation with other writing on and by women during the war. As a history, the book engages other histories of the Civil War and Lebanon more broadly, as well as works that deal with women’s lives in different ways. Though the book deals with the question of how women live and struggle in war time more generally, we chose to focus on resistance and struggle. The book features not only women who were fighters and/ or combatants—we think about resistance and struggle in a broader way. Therefore, the range of women whose experiences and analyses are highlighted were involved in the war and various struggles in a wide range of different ways.

Our methodology was developed out of feminist theory and practice of oral history. It not only is built around the stories of specific women, it also deals what they were most interested in talking about. This is how the overall theme of the book emerged and how we developed the framing. It also informs the other topics covered. For example, all of the women discussed the Israeli invasion of 1982 at length, so this emerges as an important topic. Another issue that weaves throughout is how women balance their lives as political people during the war and their commitment to private and family life. They discuss their membership—or non-membership—in political parties, what it is like to be a woman in structured political parties, and/or in other kinds of community activism and organizing during the war.

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

MA & MH: This book is part of our larger project, Women’s War Stories, which we have talked about here before. We have published four books from this project in which we met, talked to, and interviewed about fifty women, who shared stories about the war with us. We have worked with these stories in a number of ways. What the War Left Behind is actually the book we imagined producing when we started the project! All of our works can be read together to give a much fuller picture of the lives and struggles of women during the war. We want to mention here that we have worked with an excellent translator, Caline Nasrallah, on moving these stories into English from the spoken Arabic used in our interviews. 

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

MA & MH: We genuinely hope that a wide range of people will be able to access this book. The oral histories that are contained with it are too important for us not to read and share as widely as we can. The stories women tell highlight their struggles and talk about resistance in all its forms. These inspiring stories are at times difficult, but so relevant today. As we witnessing an ongoing genocide in Palestine, attacks on Gaza and Lebanon day after day, we are compelled to think about resistance. We see women in Palestine and Lebanon resisting bravely and courageously every day. The parallels with the kinds of stories told in our book are striking, down to specific details that we see on our screens every day. We hope that our book is a contribution to research and study on women and war, as well as resistance and struggle.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MA & MH: We have published four books from this large project about women and the Lebanese Civil War, but there is still a great deal of material left that we would like to work with and use to make more of the stories—the histories, political analysis, and biographies—available to as many people as possible. In the summer before the now-ongoing genocide in Palestine, which has taken our attention, we had started working on recording episodes of a podcast, drawing mainly from interviews that we were not able to include in this book. We plan to continue to work on and publish more material in both written and oral form.

J: Have you presented this book yet at launches or other events? How has the material been received so far?

MA & MH: We recently presented the book at the Coordinating Council for Palestine inaugural conference in Montreal, but before this we were honored to present our first “book launch” for What the War Left Behind at the “Montreal Popular University” encampment that existed for seventy-six days on the lower field of McGill University. It was a sunny spring day, we sat in camp chairs, and a crowd of people from a range of different communities attended. We read out sections of the book and discussed them. It was meaningful to us both that students wanted to hear these stories in this setting where they were educating people about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle day after day. The book was relevant within this setting because it is about how every day, ordinary people do extraordinary things when compelled to in war time. This message and the strength, resilience, sumoud, and resistance, are important take-away messages of the women’s oral histories collected in this book.

It is a privilege to be able to share the stories of these women—and all women—in Lebanon during the civil war with people who otherwise might not have had access to this. The intellectual and educational space of the encampments, as well as the political space they opened, have been overlooked because of the repression and violence against them. Building connections between the students in North America, especially diaspora Lebanese and Palestinian students, and the women who resisted and struggled in the Lebanese Civil War was moving. It is a way for us to honor those women who led the way and connect them to the youth are pushing us all forward to confront the war, militarism, colonialism, and violence.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 9, Sanaa Ali Ahmad, “You do what you have to do,” pages 188 to 191)

Resistance and Militancy, Political and Personal Reflections

I’m tough. It’s all the suffering. . . . First of all, two of my brothers were martyred. It was hard on us as a family. We used to see how devastated my mother was, crying out for her two martyred sons. We’d go demand that their bodies be returned to us, and they’d tell us, “They’re not here. Leave.” This all creates a lot of hatred and hostility and makes you want to take revenge on the enemy. They only returned my brothers’ bodies to us in 2000, the year of the liberation of the South. They had been kept in the Marjaayoun barracks—there were around twenty-three young men that the enemy had buried there in the area. By nature, I’m quite courageous, and I have been since I was much younger. When I was being held in Khiam prison, my courage only increased. All that suffering makes you stronger.

But I’ve always been courageous. Had I not been, I wouldn’t have marched into the office of one of Lahad’s South Lebanon Army officers and told him I wanted a man’s uniform. I didn’t even know him, and he had no clue who I was, either. I said to him, “I want you to bring me some uniforms from storage. I need two that have the Israeli star on them.” The guys had sent me to his office, and he ended up helping me. But he was wearing Lahad’s army uniform, after all, so he could very well have reported on me. He handed me the uniform, and I took it and left. This officer was from my village, from Blat. After I took the uniform, I hid it in the lining of my suitcase and crossed through the Kfar Tebnit checkpoint on my way to Saida. I had taken a risk and told the taxi driver who went to Saida what I was doing. He refused to take me and told me he didn’t want any trouble. He seemed to be a patriotic man since he didn’t report me; I think he was afraid. I reassured him that I wasn’t going to cause him any problems. I’ve always been courageous, but I became more so in Khiam. My bravery multiplied tenfold. I became stronger, and I’m still standing tall today despite all the suffering I’ve endured. What do you think? Am I strong or not?

You say I am the model of strength? I’ll tell you something, I’m not afraid. I’m bold and frank. I don’t lie. If you hurt me, I don’t vent to a third party about it; I confront you to your face. You know? Like, for example, when the ladies told me that Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah had honored a girl who’d been a collaborator in prison. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about his turban or his title. “Why would you put us in such a situation? Why would you honor her, specifically? There are so many Communist women infinitely more honorable than her. At least they were arrested and released with their integrity intact.”

Even if these women didn’t belong to any party, the fact that they were arrested and suffered at the hands of the enemy should be enough. Even though I was active, my party never really followed me closely. But now I feel like they wanted me to join their ranks because they saw how tough and brave I was. Even though there are many women in the party, there aren’t many like this.

Even if you gave me a million dollars, I would never betray a fellow activist or give up a resistance fighter. I wouldn’t even say a word about them. I was interrogated numerous times in prison, and I never said one word about the people who had helped me. I never gave them up, and I wouldn’t have sold them out, no matter what. I knew a lot about them, and I used to see them in action. Still, I never said a word. I had gone into that field willingly, and despite the beatings I endured, I knew I wouldn’t talk. I still suffer to this day from pain in my feet, rheumatism, and backaches. I suffer from so many different pains. I really suffer. They tortured me. They used whips and electric shocks and water. You name it. I suffered so much, it’s a wonder I’m still in my right mind and have the ability to talk to people and understand them. Alhamdulillah, it’s a blessing.

They used many methods of torture—electric shocks, whips, they’d make you kneel, and then they’d stomp all over your feet . . . but the psychological torture was even worse than the physical pain. Sometimes you’d be withheld food for a long time. . . . They always used to threaten you while name-dropping your family members—“I’m going to bring your mother and father and sister, and I’m going to do this and this and that”—pure psychological torture. But that didn’t break me, I swear to God. It didn’t work on me. I’d taunt him back, “Go ahead, bring them in. Do what you have to do!” He’d say, “We’re going to bring your sister in,” and I’d tell him, “Bring whoever you want! This is all the information I have. I have nothing else to say!”

They would threaten, but there was no sexual assault. No, no, no. Let them try! It was just empty threats. They’d threaten that they were going to do this and that to me, but I knew they wouldn’t actually do those things. I knew they wouldn’t sexually assault anyone because they didn’t want to risk getting anyone pregnant and then have children to deal with. They just wanted information. The rest was just lies. There was this interrogator I could tell was Druze from his name: Yahya Abu Qamar, from the village of Mari. I had been beaten up really badly, and he’d witnessed the beatings.

He asked me, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Nothing.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.” I said to him, “I don’t feel pain when I get hit. Even if you were to beat me with a whip”—and then he interrupted me and said, “I didn’t hit you.”

I continued, “You think if you beat me with a whip and make me kneel on the ground, you’re hurting me?! Think again! I never once cried out in pain, and I never once cried any tears. Not one tear! Or haven’t you noticed?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

“It didn’t hurt. You might as well have been hitting the wall. I swear to God.”

“Let me ask you something. With how much they beat you with that whip, how come you didn’t once cry out in pain? Others, men, would scream and beg for the beatings to stop!”

I told him it hadn’t hurt and that actually for me it felt like nothing more than a passing breeze. I swear to God, he then told me, “I don’t want to interrogate you.” I swear on my mother’s grave, he unlocked my handcuffs and took the bag off my face and said, “I want to talk to you. For heaven’s sake, just tell me what your deal is!” And I wondered what his deal was—he’s an interrogator!

Then he said, “Do you want some water?”

“No, thank you. If I want to drink, I’ll drink in my cell. I won’t take one drop from any of you. Not one drop. I could be dying of thirst, and I wouldn’t take any water from you.”

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you. And you’d better not think that you can buy me off with a cup of water or coffee.”

“God, no. It’s just that yesterday my own skin hurt from watching them beat you so roughly. And you didn’t even flinch.”

“Why do you think that is? It’s because I don’t give a damn. Do whatever you want, wallah.”

The interrogator was telling me that just watching me get beaten up and whipped the day before had been painful for him and that in the next room there were young men screaming for their own torture to stop. If only you could’ve seen the blood and whips on the floor. I don’t blame those men for screaming out in pain. You should’ve seen the size of those whips.

After he undid my handcuffs and lifted the bag covering my face, the interrogator said he wanted to ask me something. “With all the torture that rained down on you yesterday, I kept waiting for you to just ask them to stop.”

What he doesn’t know is that when you’re arrested, you go to prison to die, not to collaborate with the enemy. You don’t go to prison just to be weak and to stoop to their level. Right? People were humiliated, and for what? I’d die with my dignity, or I wouldn’t have joined the resistance in the first place. Do you see what I mean? Why would you join and struggle with the resistance and then change sides and work with the enemy once arrested?

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.