Jonathan Fulton, China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (New Texts Out Now)

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Oct 12, 2018 Region
Jonathan Fulton, China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (New Texts Out Now)

Jonathan Fulton, China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (New Texts Out Now)

By : Jonathan Fulton

Jonathan Fulton, China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (London: Routledge, 2018).

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

Jonathan Fulton (JF): I wrote this book because there was a big hole in the literature. There had not been any book-length treatments of China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) relations that were asking the same types of questions I was since Mohamed bin Huwaidin’s book, which was published in 2002. So much had changed in the relationships since then, and in the GCC’s international politics, and China’s larger international role—it seemed like a great topic for a book that examined all of this through an international relations (IR) lens.
There is a lot of country-specific history and politics that had to be addressed, and a lot of IR theory as well.

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

JF: This book required a lot of cross-disciplinary reading. Generally, it is a book about China-GCC relations, and specifically, it has three case studies focusing on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. There is a lot of country-specific history and politics that had to be addressed, and a lot of IR theory as well. In order to understand the foreign-policy orientations and decisions for each of the countries, I analyzed the domestic political and economic pressures they are facing, the tools leaders have to address them, and the international pressures as well. Making sense of China’s presence in the Gulf at the theoretical level means looking at a lot of variables at this domestic-international nexus.  

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

JF: This is my first book, so I see it more as a foundation for future topics I want to work on. 

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

JF: I hope this reaches a broad audience because I think the topic has important implications for a lot of people, organizations, and states. In the academic community, I think political science/IR scholars looking at China and the Middle East will find it useful. Within the policy community specifically, I have already gotten a lot of positive responses. This past summer, two events contributed to the book’s relevance—a China-Arab States Cooperation Forum meeting, which signaled a deeper level of Chinese engagement in the Middle East, and then a state visit to the United Arab Emirates from China’s President Xi. This underscored my book’s point that China has rather quietly become an important actor in the Gulf, and people from different ministries and embassies have been reaching out to ask about the book and to learn more about what China’s doing in the Gulf. The business community would benefit from the book as well; Chinese firms are becoming much more active in the Gulf, and I think this book can provide some useful perspective to help understand why and how this has been happening. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

JF: My current projects follow this book in a sense. On one track, I am working on the Belt and Road Initiative. This is China’s signature foreign policy under President Xi Jinping, and it is really the most significant foreign policy initiative the People’s Republic of China has ever undertaken. The goal is to increase connectivity across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean through infrastructure investment, which is largely being carried out by Chinese state-owned enterprises. This is expanding China’s influence tremendously and will have a lot of important political implications. I am putting an edited book together that looks at different regions in the Belt and Road, groups of states that could be classified as regional security complexes, and what the implications of Chinese involvement in these challenging environments might have on its foreign policy. I am also starting a research project on the Belt and Road in the Middle East specifically. On the other track, I am starting a project that looks at changing dynamics of the regional order in the Gulf. Other external powers are becoming more active in the region, and I think this will have interesting consequences at the regional and international levels. 

J: Why are China-Gulf relations significant?

JF: Beyond the significance of the relationships for the states in question, it also forces us to consider several larger issues: how do China’s relations with the United States feature, and does this represent a Chinese challenge to the US-led order? Does China’s growing role in the Gulf signal the emergence of a more competitive, multipolar regional order? How will other powers, like India, respond? The Gulf is a very interesting laboratory for testing IR theories, and China’s increasing influence is going to have some very interesting consequences. 


 

Excerpt from the Book:

This book analyzes and explains the growth in China’s relations with the Gulf monarchies, a group of six states that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is a relationship that has seen significant growth in recent years and has developed from a set of largely commercial relationships to multifaceted ones, involving a wide range of mutual interests, and can be characterized as dense interdependence. Writing in 2008, Alterman and Garver described China’s role in the Middle East as “simple” and “shallow”, describing its regional policy as being guided by its need for energy, “with other commercial, military and diplomatic interests playing a subsidiary role.” Since then, how- ever, these subsidiary interests have become significant features in the Sino- GCC relationship. There are over 4000 Chinese companies operating in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alone, servicing construction and infrastructure projects across the Arabian Peninsula. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese expatriates live and work in GCC states. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been using GCC ports for rest and replenishment in its ongoing naval escort to protect Chinese shipping in the Gulf of Aden. Diplomatic interactions between China and each GCC state are frequent and at a high level; every Chinese head of state has visited at least one GCC member since 1989, and every GCC member except Oman has sent a head of state to China on a state visit. Soft power tools also come into play, with religious, educational, and cultural exchanges featuring heavily. And trade, of course, is sub- stantial. In 2000, Sino-GCC trade was valued at $9.9 billion. By 2016 it had reached $114 billion. One optimistic projection forecasts it to reach $350 billion by 2023. Collectively, the GCC is China’s eighth largest export destination and its eighth largest source of imports. Importantly, the states that rank higher than the GCC are all, except Germany, Pacific countries, indicating a set of relationships with important geostrategic implications that have not yet been adequately analyzed.

The significance of Sino-GCC relations has deepened with the announce- ment of China’s Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In September 2013, Chinese Pre- sident Xi Jinping gave a speech at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, when he announced a cooperative initiative in which China and Central Asia would build what he called the Silk Road Economic Belt. The next month, speaking at the Indonesian Parliament, he proposed deeper China-ASEAN ties and a multilateral construction of a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. In November 2013, during the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he formally announced the BRI to connect China to states as far away as East Africa and the Mediterranean through a series of infrastructure construction projects. In the period since, Chinese political, business, and military leaders have been working toward what has been described as “the largest programme of eco- nomic diplomacy since the U.S.-led Marshall Plan.” The actual shape of the BRI was articulated by Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli at an Asia-Europe Meeting in Chongqing in 2015, when he announced six economic corridors connecting Eurasia through cooperative infrastructure projects:

  •  China-Mongolia-Russia
  •  New Eurasian Land Bridge
  •  China-Central and West Asia
  •  China-Indochina Peninsula
  •  China-Pakistan
  •  China-Myanmar-Bangladesh-India

 

Each of these economic corridors serves a different geopolitical objective for China, and taken together indicate an ambitious plan to increase China’s pre- sence throughout Eurasia, potentially connecting China to over 4 billion people in over 60 emerging market countries, representing 65% of global land trade and 30% of global maritime trade. Wu Jianmin, former president of China’s Foreign Affairs University and a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Foreign Policy Advisory Committee, has described it as “the most significant and far-reaching initiative that China has ever put forward.” It is President Xi’s signature foreign policy initiative, and its centrality to China’s international ambition was emphasized when the CCP’s constitution was amended during its 19th National Congress in October 2017 with the pledge to “pursue the Belt and Road initiative.” By enshrining it in the constitution, the CCP has linked its long-term foreign policy agenda to the success of the BRI.

The states of the GCC are a crucial hub in the BRI. Their geostrategic location links China to Middle Eastern, African, and European markets, and their vast hydrocarbon reserves are an important factor in driving the devel- opment projects that comprise the Belt and Road. Sino-GCC cooperation can therefore be expected to expand as China’s footprint expands across the Indian Ocean. At the same time, BRI cooperation builds upon bilateral relationships that China and the Gulf monarchies have been developing over decades. From the Gulf side, each of the GCC states have undertaken ambitious national development plans that require substantial international investment in order to fund the infrastructure projects that are intended to ease the transition to post- hydrocarbon economies. Leaders in the GCC and in China have all emphasized the complementarity of these national development programs and the BRI, offering opportunities for further coordination.

The outlook is not completely rosy, however. One serious concern for China is the rupture between the GCC (specifically Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain, as well as Egypt, a grouping that refers to itself as the Anti-Terror Quartet) and Qatar. Qatar’s relationship with its neighbors has long been difficult; as recently as 2014 Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Doha in a dispute over Qatar’s support for Islamist groups throughout the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring. The events of the summer of 2017, however, are unprecedented. One important difference is that during the 2014 dispute, Washington was pushing for reconciliation; as Gause notes, “U.S. interests in the region are better served when these states sing from the same hymnal – the American hymnal.” In the 2017 dispute, Washington’s response has been unclear, with President Trump expressing support for the Saudi side while the State Department and Department of Defense calling for mediation, emphasizing the strategic importance of America’s relationship with Qatar. This lack of focused U.S. leadership has contributed to an environment where the Anti-Terror Quartet has pursued a more aggressive approach in its attempts to bring Qatar in line. The con- tinued viability of the GCC as an international organization is uncertain at the time of writing. There has been talk of a permanent expulsion of Qatar from the GCC, with the organization going ahead with the other five mem- bers. Until the last moment it was uncertain whether its annual summit would be held in Kuwait in December 2017. When representatives from the GCC did convene, only Qatar and Kuwait had heads of state present, indi- cating a reduced view of the efficacy of the organization that was underscored when Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced the formation of a new eco- nomic and military partnership hours before the summit began. The second day of the summit was cancelled, and the future of the GCC as a viable organization seems less certain that at any time since its inception in 1981.

For China, this would represent a serious complication for its regional policy. It maintains robust bilateral relations with each of the GCC member states but has also coordinated policy with them as a group through the China-GCC Strategic Dialogue, a multilateral mechanism in place since 2010. At the 2014 round, the two sides announced plans to elevate the China-GCC relationship to a strategic partnership, which is the second-highest level in China’s hierarchy of diplomatic relations, in which China and the partner states coordinate policy on regional and international affairs of mutual interest. There has also been a China-GCC free trade agreement (FTA) under negotiation since 2004. While talks stalled in 2006, the creation of the China-GCC Strategic Dialogue revived momentum. At the 2014 Strategic Dialogue, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi indicated that the FTA is an important element of a broader relationship, describing it as “a driving force to boost pragmatic cooperation in all fields.” When President Xi paid a state visit to Riyadh in January 2016, he emphasized China’s commitment to a quick completion of negotiations, with the expectation that they would be concluded by the end of 2016. They were not, and with the future of the GCC unclear, it is unlikely that the FTA talks will resume until addressing the bigger question of how to manage a multilateral relationship with an organization that must first address internal tensions.

Another point of concern comes from the GCC’s side. Chinese leaders describe the BRI as an inclusive, cooperative development initiative, open to all, and devoid of strategic calculations. As such, the PRC is intensifying its relations with states with interests that diverge from those of the GCC, or at least from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, its two most powerful members. Iran and Turkey are both major partners in the BRI, and both have posed threats to the Gulf status quo. Deepening Chinese ties to Iran are especially a cause of concern for GCC leaders, who perceive Iranian strategic gains as a threat to their own position in the Middle East regional order. Despite the PRC’s insistence that the BRI does not have a political agenda, there are strategic concerns for states along the Belt and Road. While leaders in the GCC have voiced support for the BRI and interest in participation, they certainly have reservations about how it benefits Tehran economically, diplomatically, and strategically.

This book therefore begins with a question: what motivates China’s lea- dership to pursue these denser relationships with the Gulf monarchies? Is the motivation strategic, a response to international political considerations? Is it economic, and based on domestic political considerations? Or is it a combi- nation of the two? The motivations of GCC leaders in developing closer ties to China must also be addressed. Are they hedging their bets, concerned about the USA’s apparent frustrations with its involvement in the Middle East? Or do they see their futures as being linked with a rising Asia, and with China as a global power?
Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

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

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

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

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.