Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (New Texts Out Now)

Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (New Texts Out Now)

Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (New Texts Out Now)

By : Seth Anziska

Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018)

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

Seth Anziska (SA): As I explain in the preface, this book emerged from questions I began asking in 2001-2002, during a formative year I spent living in the West Bank settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, not far from Bethlehem. I had grown up in an American modern Orthodox Jewish community with strong attachments to Israel and little engagement with, or knowledge of, the Palestinians. The reality I witnessed on the ground forced a confrontation with that elision. In traveling between Israel and the West Bank during the height of the second intifada, the image of a place cultivated at a distance came up against a very different experience of everyday violence and the mechanics of the occupation. As an undergraduate, I turned to history as a means of making sense of what I had seen and experienced, which led to graduate work in Middle Eastern studies and international history. Broadening my perspective and spending time in Syria and Lebanon, while also returning to Israel and Palestine, helped me interrogate questions that had surfaced about the persistence of Palestinian statelessness and led to the research for this book.

Preventing Palestine demonstrates how a confluence of global and regional politics, as well as shifting local developments on the ground, has produced an outcome of indefinite occupation, statelessness, and deep fragmentation for Palestinians.

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

SA: Preventing Palestine traces the fate of the “Palestinian question”—the diplomatic negotiations over Palestinian self-determination—from Camp David in the late 1970s to the Madrid and Oslo peace process in the early 1990s. As I write in the book’s introduction, an American tendency to canonize Camp David has obscured the structural deficiencies enshrined by these early negotiations, and the link with what transpired fifteen years afterwards, during the Oslo Accords. While an Egyptian-Israeli settlement was indeed a significant achievement, it was reached at great and recurring expense. Alongside the advancement of Palestinian autonomy provisions and settlement expansion plans in the occupied territories, Camp David can be tied directly to Israel’s deadly invasion of Lebanon in 1982. What began as a political and diplomatic effort to suppress Palestinian national aspirations evolved into a military effort to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and occupy Beirut. Of course, Israel’s actions had unintended consequences. Even as the PLO was expelled to Tunis and farther afield, the persistence of Palestinian self-determination was clear in the wake of Lebanon, whether in the Arab diaspora or in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where local activists led the opposition to the Israeli occupation with the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987.

Taken together, these successive developments reshaped Israel’s relations with the Palestinians as well as broader regional politics in the Middle East during the late twentieth century in very troubling ways. In recounting this history, Preventing Palestine demonstrates how a confluence of global and regional politics, as well as shifting local developments on the ground, has produced an outcome of indefinite occupation, statelessness, and deep fragmentation for Palestinians. Beyond the particularities of the Palestinian question, the book also addresses histories of decolonization, human rights, and US internationalism in the 1970s and 1980s. Although often obscured by subsequent events, Camp David and the war in Lebanon were crucial components of an American turn to military force in the wider region. Coupled with the revival of a Cold War framing of politics in the Global South by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, this period helps us rethink the consequences of US-Middle East relations in the late twentieth century. A broader look at the Palestinian question can enable a necessary reassessment of the uneven trajectory of self-determination in the postwar era.

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

SA: As a student of Israeli and Palestinian history, as well as US foreign relations, I was shaped both by the debates of Israel’s “New Historians” over the 1948 War and the new international history of the global Cold War. The opening of the Israeli archives on Camp David and Lebanon, in particular, and the availability of a range of new sources in the United States, United Kingdom, and across the Middle East, led me to consider how these fields might be put into conversation with each other. If historians apply a transnational lens to examine the post-1967 era, what might they find? The collision of domestic politics and the rise of human rights rhetoric in 1970s America, an evolution within Palestinian politics, Israel’s first Likud government, and the shifting Cold War concerns of Egypt, for example, all suggest new avenues of inquiry that are too often viewed in isolation from one another.

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

SA: Along with readers who have an abiding interest in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and policymakers who focus on the Middle East, I am eager to reach non-specialists seeking to understand how and why the political situation in Israel and Palestine has persisted in such a damaging manner, and those who are searching for alternative ways of thinking about where things might be headed in the future. Having just marked forty years since Camp David and twenty-five years since Oslo, I am struck by how the historical context of the 1970s and 1980s is so often missing from conversations about the “peace process” and how quickly we forget the recent past. Many of the concepts that have served to demarcate the extent of possible Palestinian political horizons—autonomy rather than sovereignty, for example—emerged at a particular moment and are recurring today.

I am also hoping that the book will find an audience in the region, hopefully in Arabic and Hebrew, given the relevance of this history to Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli readers, among others. Access to previously untapped or classified sources can be a gift for the historian, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to revisit seminal events like the Sabra and Shatila massacre with crucial new material in the course of my research. However, access also comes with obligations, especially given the sensitivity of this history and its political significance. I have therefore worked to create an online repository for fellow researchers and a wider public who may be interested in consulting these sources as well.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

SA: In writing Preventing Palestine, it was clear to me that the story of what happened in Lebanon in 1982 has far more resonance than what one chapter allowed. I have started interviewing military veterans and survivors of this war in Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel, with plans to write a broader account of the international history of 1982. By accounting for local transformations brought on by the invasion, as well as the regional reordering and global repercussions of the war, we can better understand how events in the 1980s shaped the post-Cold War Middle East, and also affected domestic politics in the United States, from American Jewish engagement with Israel and Zionism, to Arab-American activism and the rise of neoconservative thinking in US foreign policy. There are also the social and cultural dimensions of 1982, and the internal ruptures within Lebanon and Israel fomented by the war. I have been working on another project that involves a tale of military refusal and rumor, concerning an Israeli pilot and a Lebanese artist who documented the invasion. I am eager to explore the possibility and limitations of historical research across national borders, given the afterlife of political violence.

J: How might the period you write about in Preventing Palestine shed light on the current predicament facing Palestinians?

SA: In crucial ways, I think we are seeing a revival of ideas that were bandied about in the 1970s and 1980s, from "limited autonomy" to "economic peace" for Palestinians. Unlike US administrations in the past, the Trump administration has made clear that it is not interested in a sovereign outcome, while Palestinians themselves are shifting to a rights-based conversation rather than one focused on the attainment of a state. Israeli political developments have accelerated this trend, with a host of politicians talking about 2019 as the year of annexation in key parts of the West Bank. The recent developments with the Golan Heights may very well pave the way. Along with the continued blockade of the Gaza Strip, and the wider regional politics of normalization, it is a very grim picture. If the lessons of Camp David were not quite heeded in the context of Oslo, however, there is a far greater popular awareness today of the pitfalls of negotiations that allow for settlement expansion and deprive Palestinians of meaningful sovereignty.

 

Excerpt from Book

From Chapter Three, “Egypt’s Sacrificial Lamb,” pp. 106-110:

“This is perhaps the first time we sit together since Moses crossed the waters not very far from here,” Anwar al-Sadat proudly told his guest. “Let us here teach the world a new way of facing problems between two nations let us tell them that sincerity, honesty, goodwill and, above all, love can solve any problem.” It was Menachem Begin’s first trip to Egypt, and Sadat’s warm welcome underscored its historic nature. “When Moses took us out of Egypt, it took him 40 years to cross the Sinai desert,” a reverent but jovial Begin told his Egyptian counterpart. “We did it in 40 minutes.” The Christmas Day visit to Sadat’s presidential residence on the banks of the Suez Canal in Ismailia provided the Israeli prime minister with a chance to formally present his autonomy plan to the Egyptians after its announcement to American and British leaders.

Begin sought out Sadat’s approval for his approach to the Palestinian question, as distinct from the broader discussions over the Sinai Peninsula. After first laying out the Israeli position on withdrawal from the Sinai, the Israeli leader turned to his proposal for “self-rule for the Palestinian Arabs.” He opened with the issue of sovereignty, which he acknowledged neither Israel nor Palestinians were willing to cede. Rather, by dealing with human beings and leaving the question of sovereignty open, Begin described the essence of his idea. “We give the Palestinian Arabs self-rule and the Palestinian Jews security.” He read out the details of his proposal, which Sadat said he would take into consideration, pleased to have moved from procedural concerns to substantive negotiations.

Later that evening, having reviewed the Israeli proposals, Sadat returned to the second meeting with the Israelis and was more critical. On the question of the Sinai, Sadat opposed any restrictions on Egyptian sovereignty. He rejected Begin’s suggestion to keep airfields or Jewish settlements behind after a withdrawal. “If I tell my people that my friend Begin said there will be settlements in Sinai and some defense force to defend them, they will throw stones at me.” As for the Palestinian question, Sadat continued, it was “a step, a real step. … But it is not sufficient as yet.” He went on to describe the aspirations of Palestinian moderates for independence and the tight spot Egypt found itself as their defender in the Arab world given all the opposition to his trip to Jerusalem. The two leaders agreed this difference was a “problem.” In revising the joint statement to the public about their meeting, Begin raised the issue of invoking 242 and withdrawal from the territories, which he could not sign onto given his divergent interpretation of the resolution. He also objected to the word “self-determination,” if it signified a state. “This is the mortal danger of which I speak. We can use the word ‘self-rule.’”

Despite Sadat’s rhetorical support for the Palestinians, his talks with Begin revealed a great deal of Egyptian antipathy toward the PLO and Palestinian nationalists. Begin expressed fears about security and the growing influence of the PLO on Israel’s borders, framing his explanation in Cold War terms and appealing to Sadat’s hostile view of the Soviet Union. “Some of the PLO men are Soviet agents,” Begin remarked. “All of them,” Sadat replied. The Egyptian president nevertheless upheld his commitment to representing Palestinian aspirations. “Still I must lead the Arab world. It is the leadership of Egypt historically that has always prevailed. It is in your interest as well as ours.”

The symbolic claims of leadership belied Sadat’s narrower interests and willingness to concede to Begin in private, which Egypt’s newly appointed foreign minister later criticized. In concluding their talks, both leaders returned to the concept of self-rule, and Begin reiterated his opposition “to a Palestinian state of Arafat and [Fatah leader] Kaddumi.” Sadat agreed, “As you know I have always been in favor of a link with Jordan—a federal or a confederal—would be decided before Geneva.” It was a startling and crucial admission, paving the way for significant concessions in future negotiations. Begin was relieved to hear it, and insisted the final Ismailia declaration only mention “self-rule” from the Israeli point of view. “We will not wound them by saying anything else,” Begin added. “Self-determination means a state and that we cannot accept.” Sadat again agreed, “But tomorrow I will be accused of having sold the Palestinian Arabs to Mr. Begin.” Begin assured him it would not happen. “We must have the courage of decision,” the Israeli prime minister concluded.

Both the Israelis and the Egyptians were flatly dismissive of the Palestinian national movement and the existing leadership in the occupied territories. Dayan stressed that neither side wanted a Palestinian state, nor were there existing leaders in the territories that could make one. If either side committed in public to statehood, Dayan emphasized, Arafat would seek to come back to the territories, and the refugees would be transferred to Jericho, “a first stage for an attack on Israel.” Sadat again concurred, having his own doubts about elements within the PLO: “I quite agree with you about the question of security and that the extremists should not be permitted, since they will cause trouble for all of us, especially after the Tripoli Conference. There is Arafat and that fanatic [George] Habbash [sic]. He has declared himself a Marxist-Leninist.” In the same breath as he dismissed Palestinian hard-liners, like the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Sadat was clearly conflicted given his role as a nominal protector of Palestinian rights. “The difficulty is for me that I have to solve the Palestinian problem by self-determination.”

Aware of Egypt’s discomfort with the PLO, the Israelis saw an opening. They pressed Sadat to negotiate the Palestinian problem independently with the Jordanians and the “Palestinian Arabs” in a manner that avoided self-determination. “We always speak with candor,” Begin remarked. “All of us understand that self-determination means a state. Therefore, we shall suggest self-rule or home-rule or autonomy.” In the context of a first official visit to Egypt, the Israeli prime minister was seeking out an alliance on the Palestinian question. He wanted Sadat to agree to a statement “in general terms about a just settlement of the Palestinian Arab problem” without specifying further. Dayan added that Sadat could tell the Palestinian Arabs that Egypt would fight for self-determination as a face-saving mechanism. After further consultations, a decision was ultimately made to announce two different views of the Palestinian problem at the closing press conference and hold further meetings in Cairo and Jerusalem led by Egypt’s new foreign minister, Mohammed Kamel.

Sadat’s acquiescence to Israel’s firm agenda for dealing with the Palestinians at Ismailia was a telling indicator of his overall approach to the elements of the negotiations that did not concern Egypt’s bilateral interests. His mirroring of Israeli language and open use of Begin’s term for the West Bank was clear in the public statements the next morning: “The position of Egypt is that in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip a Palestinian state should be established. The position of Israel is that Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza should enjoy ‘self-rule.’ We have agreed that because we have differed on this issue it should be discussed in the political committee of the Cairo Preparatory Conference.” In settling the Palestinian question via committee, while preparing bilateral Egyptian-Israeli negotiations at a subsequent conference in Cairo, the two parties had agreed to disagree on the question of Palestinian self-determination, deferring a decision but also giving Begin effective room to push forward with his own plans. Sadat’s own advisors were appalled at the discussions, as well as Begin’s relentless style. In his memoirs, Kamel later wrote with disdain how he watched the Israeli prime minister “bargaining and bartering (like a petty shopkeeper), dealing with things that did not belong to him in the first place, just as if the offer of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace were a passing summer cloud!”

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.