After Oslo: New Realities, Old Problems.

• Author: Lughod, Ibrahim Abu
• Position: Review

George Giacaman and Dag Jorund Loning, Eds. London and Chicago: Pluto Press, 1998, 241 pp. Paperback, no price indicated.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Abu Lughod

This is an important and timely collection of ten essays contributed by an interdisciplinary team consisting of scholars, a journalist, and an Arab scholar who is a member of the Knesset. The volume is the product of a cooperative venture between Chr Michelson Institute of Bergen, Norway, and Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy, Ramallah, Palestine. The parsimonious introduction of the editors (each of whom contributed to the volume) does not provide sufficient information on the process by which the various contributors essentially addressed themselves to what many of the contributors identified as the Palestinian/American/Israeli obsession with the so-called Peace Process of Oslo. Even in the absence of such information, it is clear from a very careful reading of the volume that the authors were either briefed very carefully or did actually engage in a dialogue that contributed considerably to the coherence and the integration of these diverse essays.

The authors represent an interesting mix: five are Palestinian (whether hyphenated or not), one Israeli, two Norwegians, one British and a Dutch. All have made important scholarly contributions on the subject, are quite familiar with the scene and thus their assessment of the post-Oslo reality of Palestine is well-grounded. The emphasis and the raison d'etre of the volume is clearly on the Palestinian reality (and the Israeli one as it impinges on Palestine) as it has been shaped by four years of the writ and functioning of Oslowizing Palestine. In one important respect, the volume is not really concerned with history; only very minimally do some of the essays (Giacaman, Butchenson, Hilal and Raz-Krakotzkin) allow a historical reference in their depiction of the contemporary political and social reality. In that sense, the title of the volume is quite faithful to the substance and thus what the authors intend to accomplish is to describe, analyze and assess the new Palestinian politics in so far as these are the outcome of the process of Oslo, euphemistically referred to by the principal actors American, Palestinian, Arabs and the Norwegian broker. While the volume's framework is Palestine/Israel from the standpoint of the Oslo process, many of the essays refer to external powers especially the U.S. and clearly...