Oslo and its Discontents: Peace Process as Colonial War

Adnan Hussain: Salaam, hello, peace to you all. I'm Adnan Hussain, and I have some exciting news for you about this upcoming series. It's called History in the Time of Genocide Denial, Palestine and the World. It's a seven-part series about the history of Israel-Palestine. It begins, broadly speaking, with the Crusades and Islamophobia and antisemitism through to Ottoman history, but then really gathers steam when we come to the 19th century, and it traces and discusses the relationships between Jewish nationalism and Palestinian resistance in the history of the region broadly from Eastern Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean. So I think you're going to find it a very interesting series. It's basically a dialogue, in some cases, mini lectures from my friend and esteemed colleague, Dr. Ariel Saltzman, who was teaching a course last fall about this very subject after discussing with her her approach and what kinds of arguments she makes about how to reframe the question of Palestine. I thought it would be really useful to make this available in some form to a wider audience and not just her students in that particular class. So we recorded in December for many, many hours and had some wonderful discussions and a great dialogue where she had the opportunity to summarize some of her key points in this history from her course. In certain cases, she refers to slides. Unfortunately, we weren't able to share screen when we were recording and it proved too cumbersome to find where we could splice these slides in so there's a visual component that she sometimes was referring to that isn't available to you but no worries her descriptions and analysis of these certainly will give you a sense of what was being referred to so just ignore the references to the slides But I do think you're going to find this a very, very useful and important resource in thinking about the question of Palestine. And although we recorded in December and since that time, there have been a lot of very important developments. In fact, you could say that the ongoing situation is constantly writing a new chapter. in this story that we need to engage with and analyze. But I think this longue durée history and background will give you very valuable resources and tools for conceptualizing and contextualizing the genocide that's been taking place in Gaza. Now, as I mentioned, this is a seven-part series. If you're watching on YouTube, this is the first episode and you should look out for more episodes unfolding over the course of the upcoming weeks. In seven weeks' time, you will complete the series. And likewise, if you're an audio podcast listener, you also will have an episode each week for the coming period of time. However, if you would like to listen to all of them all at once, in one go. You're the kind who likes to binge watch or binge listen. You can have access to all of them. At this time, they're available for Patreon supporters and subscribers. You can go to patreon.com slash Adnan Hussain, A-D-N-A-N H-U-S-A-I-N become a paid subscriber and you will have access to these immediately to start listening to learning from and enjoying of course these will be available this is an important resource it'll be available to everyone in due course unfolding as a serial series taking place over the next couple of months Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this series. Until the next episode, salaam, peace, and solidarity to you all. Welcome back to the fifth episode of History in a Time of Genocide Between Palestine and the World. We just were talking about in our last episode, developments that took place through the establishment of the State of Israel and a regional understanding of the role of Israel in the politics of the post-colonial Cold War in the Middle East, and about the birth of Palestinian national liberation and resistance movements, and ended talking a little bit about popular, peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations and mobilization that took place in the so-called First Intifada. But we've got Dr. Ariel Salzman back to continue our discussion really about this next phase of the history of Palestine, which is the era of the peace process, the Oslo peace process. Ariel, welcome back. Well, I mean, I wanted to ask you a little bit about, you know, my sense of the Oslo peace process was that it was something that, you know, there may have been a lot of factors and causes, but in fact, actually that popular resistance of the Intifada is what led Israel to try and develop a new strategy for maintaining some kind of control over over the occupied Palestinian territories. And that, in fact, actually the bringing back of the Tunisians, as they were called, that is the Exiled Palestine Liberation Organization leadership that now had been somewhat cut off from developments on the ground Palestinian society under occupation wasn't a mechanism in a way to bring to an end the popular uprising that, as you had pointed out in our last discussion, had gone on remarkably for years of disciplined, coordinated protest, boycotts and mass mobilization to resist occupation. How did you see and how would you explain the Oslo peace process?

Ariel Salzmann: Yeah, I think, I sort of frame this approach to looking at this period from say, 48 to 1993, we separate into two sections, but I try to avoid this tit for tat, this war, that war, this gain, that gain, this diplomatic move and the other, because first of all, anyway, it's a problem and you lose the forest for the trees. So, I would say just to back up a little bit that, you know, what happens in this period in the 60s and 70s, even though the Palestinians will, in the PLO, will renounce armed struggle. and will opt for, you know, any land for peace sort of program. The fact is that up until this point and beyond, and we're living in this era now, is that as Tarek Barakoni pointed out in a really important podcast he did Mahin Rabbani, is that you're dealing with these two notions of violence. I mean, there's violence that's ongoing, you know, in the West Bank all the time against, in West Bank and Gaza, the occupied territories. And that's considered a sort of civilized violence when they have perfect rights to resist an illegal occupation, which it was, illegal expropriations. This is a period in the 70s, in the 60s, of course, No less than Moshe Dayan says, let's create facts on the ground. Whether he opened the door to settlements in the large numbers that there are today, which is 750,000 Israeli citizens now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank. or not. I mean, this is part of a process of violence that's ongoing that the Palestinians react to largely in a peaceful fashion. And I think that's not never emphasized enough because living under occupation, putting up with an occupation and not just, you know, engaging in just the kind of trauma and the kind of oppression that exists, that in itself is resistance. That's everyday resistance. And so there's this way in which the whole struggle that Palestinians have undergone and Israeli repression are characterized in two different registers of violence, legitimate violence by the Israelis so far that it's done with a uniform, and a weapon of mass destruction of some sort, you know, impersonal weapon, and then what the Palestinians are engaged upon, whether it's throwing a rock or even, sadly, a suicide bombing. But the numbers, you know, you look at the numbers, they're just incomparable. I mean, the scale of destruction that the Israeli military have visited upon the Palestinians in this entire period. So I think this is sort of, I think we have to start out with really rethinking what is violence in this situation and that these crimes of war are ongoing for the Palestinians. They have not stopped. And of course, they've escalated to a new point right now.

Adnan Hussain: Well, I do think our audience has read their phenom. So you're there to say that it's state supported violence isn't, you know, legitimized and resistance to colonial occupation is something that people understand as you know, legitimate, both under international law, but also that they're facing ongoing.

Ariel Salzmann: But not the way the media portrays it, not the way our textbooks portray it, not the way that this sort of succession of military operations, whether by external powers or by the Palestinians themselves, you know, are portrayed and classified, you know, for the popular audiences. So what I'm trying to say is I'm juxtaposing, You know, whatever, however, we consider the wages of war as crimes, as, you know, as resistance, you know, a violence to actually the violence of the peace. Right. Because what the Palestinians have suffered is not just the violence of war. And I would argue what the Israelis have failed to understand is not only wages of war, but the wages of peace negotiations that are insincere and are inherently self-defeating. And they have perpetuated this conflict to the detriment primarily of Palestinians, but also of the Jewish people that live within proximity, either in occupied areas or in pre-'67 areas of what was historic Palestine. So when we approach, you know, back to Oslo, when we approach Oslo, I think what we have to do is back up to, of course, the 70s when the first peace overtures of frontline states are made. So that's, you know, in the wake of Nasser's death and the rise of, you know, a new regime under Anwar Sadat, you know, facing new dynamics globally, economically, of course, internally with the rise of a new political you know, a group of the Muslim Brotherhood of taking, moving from, you know, civil support humanitarian clinics and schools, moving fully into the political arena and, of course, eventually taking Sadat's life in this process, that these new challenges are then result in really an abandonment of the Palestinian cause and the search for some kind of solution for Egypt itself and, of course, the regime that's being represented. And that results in the first Camp David Accords. Sadat had been trying to make that kind of overture. He finally takes this, you know, bold gesture of, you know, flying directly into Israel to meet with the right wing government, you know, not a labor government. And, you know, this results in what becomes, as Rashi Khalidi notes very clearly in his Brokers of Deceit, that this ends up being this pattern by which peace is made without Palestine, peace is made without the Palestinians, right? And it will continue in this vein. And we see it all the way up, of course, under Trump. You just ignore them, they'll go away. They'll be disappeared, right?

Adnan Hussain: They can be made irrelevant to an economic and political alliance that sidelines their question, and they just can be suffocated and quarantined while we progress to integrate the region on the basis of these other trade agreements and so on, and arms and all of that.

Ariel Salzmann: Yes, yes. So this violence of the peace, the crimes of the peace, I mean, really, you know, beginning with the UN, you know, dividing Palestine and precipitating, you know, all the wars that have come in its wake, you know, all the deaths and all the destruction is something we have to consider and goes up to the present day. And it has several, you know, sidelining the Palestinians, creating this bridge over Palestine and over the issue in order to reap the benefits of these other things that will happen with trade agreements with Israel, which over the course of the 70s, thanks to support from the United States, became a major military pillar of US policy during the Cold War, developed this military industrial complex of its own, excelled in certain niche areas of the global economy, brought in populations from Ethiopia to Russia, millions came to converge and indeed created an Israel that is a uniquely different Jewish, predominantly Jewish dominated by Jews. But it is distinct nation, but it's not synonymous with Jews. It's it's Israel, you know, and it has that feature. But so this is very tempting for the states around it as also as a as a door to the United States and a door to recognition. The United States, you know, comes with this condition. that Israel is part of. So we have this ongoing and we have the underlying but never spoken understanding that although this two-state solution is dangled in front of all of these states and is on the lips, you know, the sort of thing you have to say when you're negotiating this, There is never an intent to allow Palestinians to have their own real state with a real military and a real economy and real autonomy. You know, even, you know, at the best of it is going to be a sort of fictive state, a little, you know. An authority. An authority. Yeah, that's why it's called an authority. Somewhere between a Bantustan and an authority, right? You know, without an army or anything else and subject to intervention by, chiefly by Israel, but it could be, you know, by Jordan as well. So, you know, this brings us up to, you know, the Palestinians renouncing armed violence, the PLO renouncing armed violence, and, you know, basically the PLO grooming itself to be an interlocutor in this process. And jumping over, of course, there are other groups operating, groups further to the left and, you know, with different sets of alliances. So it's in this moment, as you were pointing out, in 93, 92, 93, when this massive uprising is going on that cannot be repressed, that Palestinians show their samud, their resilience and the resistance to the utmost, that back-channel negotiations start happening. through Norway. And these negotiations had been ongoing between Israelis and Palestinians for a long time. There had been Palestinians- You know, H.W. Bush kind of helped- No, no, no, no, but Israelis- Had been negotiating with Palestinians and talking. And the other thing I have to say, and this is, I think, also very important for understanding the complete dynamics, you know, between the countries and within the region, it's the high point of the peace movement in Israel. And this is the point where there's great solidarity, you know, not just the Israeli left, but peace now emerges in the 80s, the experience in Lebanon, the horrors of Lebanon. It's the last time that Israelis take their military to task for atrocities that are committed. Right? So there's increasing sympathy for the Palestinians, solidarity. I mean, I didn't bring them up, but I have posters from the, from the 80s, you know, solidarity for Bayer Zayt University because students are frozen out. And so, and there are demonstrations after Sabrin Shatila, the massacre in 82, the mass murder of Palestinian refugees under the aegis of the Israeli occupation by their allies, the Falange. And so this whole thing is, you know, it's the movement is creating a dynamic within Israel as well, right? And so all those things come together and bring about this moment of engagement where, The then-labor government led by Yitzhak Rabin comes together with Yasser Arafat representing the Palestinians, and a deal is hammered out that's known as the Oslo Accords. What it does, however, it pulls the rug out from the intifada within, because Yasser Arafat is no longer the Palestinians who are on the ground doing this resistance. It pulls the rug out from the Palestine National Congress in which Rashid Khalidi, Hanan Ashrawi, Edward Said are all, yeah, they're all prominent members and had been negotiating on their own for a different type of settlement, a different type of recognition, much more substantive and also grounded in democratic and liberal principles, right? So, you know, it's the Israelis, the Americans I see as picking their preferred interlocutor. you know, a person whose group is isolated now, who has no proximity to either power, political power or military power. And, you know, again, is not the type of person who would necessarily push beyond a certain way. So I think Arafat on the one hand, you know, I could see why the PLO moved for this. They had been out of power. There didn't seem to be much headway they could make any other place. The moment seemed correct. And I don't think we should discount Yasser Arafat and the PLO's own desire to come to power and take control of this new political entity. The problem is what they agreed to. And that can only be expressed not in the details, but on the map. And they designate three areas. And basically, the largest area is reserved for Israeli control. Area C. Area C, yeah, is Israeli control. Two smaller areas in which the Palestinians can operate, exert sort of hegemony. And then one of mixed control. By this time too, even by 93, there were substantial settlements in the region. Not as, you know, anywhere near what they will be. But nonetheless, there were settlements. And these settlements were part of.

Adnan Hussain: Steve Winick A couple hundred thousand, I think, already, you know.

Ariel Salzmann: Anne McLean People, yeah, a couple hundred thousand people. I think 150 settlements or so.

Adnan Hussain: Steve Winick Yeah.

Ariel Salzmann: Anne McLean They're concerned. So, area A, under Palestinian control, represented only 18% of the land. Area B, which was under joint control, again, these are all little patchworks. except for Area C, which has a long continuity on the border of Jordan, you know, and the argument being, of course, that Israel has to maintain this as a security corridor. So Area B, 22%, and Area C is actually 60% of the total of the West Bank. By this time, too, there were settlements in Gaza, in what is now going to be a corridor, a highway that's going to bisect Gaza and the Netzarim corridor that the Israelis are constructing right now as we speak in Gaza. So they were also settlements in Gaza as well. So basically, you know, and this was roundly decried by Palestinian elites, authorities. Edward Said wrote a very important essay in The Nation magazine, you know, denouncing this agreement. And what, you know, I think that Yasser Arafat hoped to put off was the, you know, the final stages of the agreement, which were put off into the future. And they involved a whole host of things, including the status of Jerusalem.

Adnan Hussain: The East Jerusalem, the refugees and their right to return, how that would be dealt with.

Ariel Salzmann: Exactly.

Adnan Hussain: That's right.

Ariel Salzmann: And the right of return. So, you know, with Oslo, I think is, you know, it's a level of violence where we see the violence of the peace. And this would soon unfold as successive, you know, both in Israeli society, there were peaceniks who were killed, and there was an assault on the mosque in Hebron that killed tens of people. Yeah, Baruch Goldstein, one of the settlers.

Adnan Hussain: Baruch Gold in Ramadan, I believe. Yes, that's right.

Ariel Salzmann: And that was denounced by Yitzhak Rabin, who would then himself fall victim to a right-wing settler's bullet. There would be mayors on the West Bank who would have bombs planted under them. and whose assassins, some were killed, some lost their limbs in this process. So the violence just escalated, as did over this period, the rate of settlement, especially after the effective end of the early labor governments that had engaged in these peace negotiations. And by 95, so...

Adnan Hussain: I mean, it accelerates, I mean, under all of the governments.

Ariel Salzmann: No, it accelerates, but there's several, no, there's several phases.

Adnan Hussain: There's geometric expansion of settlements.

Ariel Salzmann: They extend under the Labor government. They extend even more under Likud, but then continued. I mean, the Israeli governments all the way from 67 onward have either turned a blind eye to what was happening or actually encouraged it. And I go back to citing Moshe Dayan, who said facts on the ground. That's how you establish security. That's how you establish Israel's claims.

Adnan Hussain: Yeah. But I think, wasn't it, isn't it the case that Yitzhak Rabin himself said that what Palestine, you know, the conclusion of the Oslo Accords and the peace process, because we never, they never arrived to the final stages, right? but that the conclusion of it would be that Palestine would have something less than a state. So it never, you know, was meant to create.

Ariel Salzmann: No, no, no, there was never any intention. I mean, you look at this, you know, Arafat's isolated, you know, he's continually, you know, his authority, you know, the authority of the Palestine authority is continually undermined. You know, as time goes on, the Palestinian police force that's supposed to do Israel's bidding, in these regions is killed off in huge numbers. You know, it's the target of Israeli military attacks. And when, of course...

Adnan Hussain: Which is remarkable when they're, you know, basically subcontracting the occupation, you know, like all the activists are being rounded up by the Palestinian Authority, you know, during this period.

Ariel Salzmann: And jailed and tortured. Absolutely, yeah. But the way that the Palestinians are treated as lackeys, you know, as subordinate lackeys. I mean, the kind of disrespect, I mean, you could see over this time period and, you know, as the settlements multiplied, they grew more quickly in this time period than ever before. Oslo just opened the gates on settlements. And these would be the tail, you know, even today they represent, what, 10% of the Israeli population overall? And even, you know, maybe a little more of the Israeli Jewish population. But they're the tail that wags the dog in all these political negotiations going on. So Oslo sowed the seeds for perpetual you know, annexation and conflict. And of course, Yitzhak Rabin would be killed. himself, he would be assassinated by a settler. And in successive governments, you know, Arafat would be more and more isolated, ending up with that final negotiation, which I will never forget, with Clinton, who was trying to repair his legacy after his peccadilloes, that had colored his presidency. And he too, devout Christian, right? Jimmy Carter, Clinton, all these people. And forcing at the 11th hour, forcing Arafat's hound to concede on Jerusalem. And it's that very moment that in classic Haganah, you know, Israeli political fashion, Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Shetila, literally throws a Molotov into the room by organizing a, you know, phalanx of IDF soldiers to walk with him into the Haram al-Sharif. and sets off basically the second intifada. And it should not be forgotten. I think we were at NYU at the time, right? And we were talking about the consequences. And I forget what month that was. It must have been December.

Adnan Hussain: I think it was, yeah.

Ariel Salzmann: It was December because Clinton was going out.

Adnan Hussain: Eighth fall, early winter, yes.

Ariel Salzmann: Clinton was going out. He was about to be replaced by Bush, George W. Bush, Gorehead. thrown in the towel, and then months later, but a year later, September 11th would unfold. And there definitely is a connection between them. as far as I'm concerned. Not that one organized the other, but that that collapse, that resonated so powerfully, you know, of what was going on, I think, throughout the Muslim world. Sharon's arrogant, hubris action in the midst of, you know, and that pressuring, that humiliation of Arafat. And of course, the second intifada would begin and would be led really not by Palestinian secular groups represented by the PLO.

Adnan Hussain: Who had lost some legitimacy through the course of the Oslo process.

Ariel Salzmann: Had continually lost legitimacy, had been delegitimized by the Oslo process, but by new Islamically influenced groups, including Hamas. They would take charge of the second intifada and push basically the PLO to the background or playing catch up, you know, in terms of trying to regain the legitimacy that they had lost.

Adnan Hussain: Yeah, I mean, they had obviously had a few years of being able to embed themselves in, you know, some institutions and, of course, with some of the resources that occasionally have customs duties and things like this that would be released by Israel so that they had networks of clients and patronage that, you know, and certain kind of bureaucratic government jobs and security jobs and these kinds of things that allowed them to still maintain some kind of base of support through that service. network of patronage, but in terms of political and ideological resistance to the perpetual and extending conditions of occupation and the resentments that emerged from some aspects of you know, the occupation being, you know, subcontracted out, you know, obviously then created a new opportunity for political formations and resistance to rise in this context. And, you know, when we think about that.

Ariel Salzmann: And the Israelis also did their best, of course, to undermine the secular national model. and they need not basically fund Hamas or pay Hamas or anything like that. You just have to target assassinations, this person, that person, shift the balance by changing the emphasis on where the oppression was and repression.

Adnan Hussain: Yes, yes, exactly. And so it's kind of very typical colonial divide and rule and conquer kind of conditions.

Ariel Salzmann: Indirect rule, yeah.

Adnan Hussain: Indirect rule, exactly. Something that the British had been masters of in Africa and the Middle East. You know, you see the kind of colonial continuities there. But one thing I wanted to point out about the Aqsa Intifada, the Second Intifada, you know, as it's called, I think, you know, in many ways, and you're drawing a connection between, between that and the 9-11 attacks as not a coordinated, but something that responded to the horrific conditions. Two points to be made. One is that, of course, the other wider regional perspective is to see that in the intervening period, there was, of course, the first Gulf War that was very close to the time period of Oslo. In fact, it came right after the Gulf War where United States was expressing its hegemony as a victor of the Cold War and that it would now repress and suppress any regimes that tried to go against US dictates in the key geostrategic region where, you know, the world's energy resources were, you know, kind of the swing producers of oil and so on. You know, so there was something about this post-Cold War period. and the U.S. role and extending its role in the region and the subsequent sanctions and the subsequent kind of delays in the Oslo process to achieve any genuine liberation for Palestinians, that these were going hand in hand

Ariel Salzmann: And one can turn the clock backward a little bit further. And of course, it's a big, big neglect, which is 1979. So even before the end of the Cold War in 89, you know, you have this whole new phenomenon that is also resonating throughout the region that, you know, what Rashid Ridda, imagined was the only route after Syria. When he left Syria in 1920, when liberal democracy was defeated and went on to concentrate on some form of Islamic revolution, That would finally be realized in 1979 in Shi'i state in Iran. And that had tremendous, you know, even though it was Shi'i, it wasn't Sunni, but it had tremendous repercussions throughout the region, you know, and gave, you know, space and, yeah.

Adnan Hussain: Yeah, the counterpoint to that was the coterminous basically construction of a jihadist international supported and financed and provided- Yeah, in Afghanistan. Yeah, in Afghanistan against the Russian intervention in Afghanistan. And so you had kind of two successor kind of orientations, you might say, in the collapse of secular nationalists, sometimes quasi-socialist projects of either Arab nationalism or, you know, forms of development.

Ariel Salzmann: These were eclipsed by... Yeah, also the Iran-Iraq war. So the Iran-Iraq war was another blow. You talked about the sanctions, but before that is the Iran-Iraq war, which, of course, Europe and the United States are funding both sides or giving Saddam coordinates, satellite coordinates to fight the Iranians. And so 1991 is a product of that war. Again, the wholesale assault on secular nationalism. whether it's the PLO, whether it's in Iraq, you know, the Baathist regime, the last one standing or, you know, so yeah, at the end of the Cold War, and that changing configuration, but also the emergence of Islamist movements as a seemingly viable route to a decolonization, to a final decolonization.

Adnan Hussain: Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right. I just thought that that was relevant in thinking about the emergence and the rise of Hamas in the sense that it mirrors or patterns- Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ariel Salzmann: Absolutely, absolutely.

Adnan Hussain: In the region. And so we can see it as not something apart or separate. It has some unique features and facets of the history that we've been talking about in terms of the false promise of Oslo and the violence, as you said.

Ariel Salzmann: False promise of emancipation.

Adnan Hussain: But that's it. That's what it comes back to again, is that, you know, this was similar to the question of the de- and re-colonization game that had happened in previous decades, where any project of sovereign development, whether national or regional, was being subverted and undermined in various ways, either because of competitions in the Cold War that prevented really the region from flourishing, or it is the neocolonial, you know, kind of entity in 56 with the Suez War, the tripartite aggression, as it's called, or whether it's the US sort of Eisenhower doctrine, as you mentioned, that looks at any kind of militant third world nationalism as tantamount to, you know, communism, the communist threat, and it has to be rolled back and has to be stopped so that this region has been, its pathways to emancipation have been derailed by colonialism, then by, you know, the post-war Cold War and the establishment of a neocolonial settler late, very late. If you think about the history of settler colonialism and of colonialism in general in the overt way, I mean, the establishment of Israel is at the very end of this kind of when the rest of the world is starting to, you know, achieve at least political liberation in the post-colonial nation states, that is introduced into the region. It disrupts, causes all sorts of wars. But as you were saying, the violence of the peace itself is to keep this underdeveloped, fragmented, under pressure. And that, you know, the story of Palestine fits into the story of the region in that sense.

Ariel Salzmann: Yeah, and I think that, but also that affinity that across the political spectrum, you know?

Adnan Hussain: Right, right.

Ariel Salzmann: don't feel with PLO. PLO had that purchase at a certain moment in regional history when the going form of governance was secular nationalism. And as that moment is passed and the failure of all those projects to deliver

Adnan Hussain: Is that new movements and orientations start to develop. I mean, I guess that's the point is that without solving this problem, you have, you know, responses that keep having to try and assert some form of sovereignty of development. And these will take different kinds of forms, you know, with the short circuiting and derailing of certain kinds of projects. You know, people turned to, you know, other resources that you might say for as the venues through which resistance and these aspirations, you know, for a better life, you know, get articulated.

Ariel Salzmann: And the plight of the Palestinians becomes this mirror.

Adnan Hussain: Yes, yes.

Ariel Salzmann: On the greater region and the Islamic world as a whole. And still, of course, with purchase to the post-colonial world in Africa, and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Adnan Hussain: But one of the consequences, and this is something that you've mentioned, but just to pull this thread, one of the consequences of this process of a violent peace, of peace that perpetuates colonial violence, disruption, and suppression, uh is that um it has fragmented even the uh basic elements of historic solidarities of the arab states that we saw you know starting with the 73 war i mean there was the arab oil embargo you know was a moment that actually really shifted. In fact, we might even say that that's where certain geostrategic orientations for the region are concocted because it's seen as an unstable area where the world's energy resources are contained in a high enough quantity that they can affect global markets. which is what the embargo, you know, was attempting to do. It's the era where neoliberalism, you know, the shock economically, you know, pushes to it. And maybe it was already starting to happen, but it, you know, really pushes development in certain ways.

Ariel Salzmann: And U.S. Well, potentially could have been the birth, real birth of a climate movement. Well, it could have. Even before 1978, when, you know, Hansen made the link between, uh co2 in the atmosphere and and uh you know disastrous uh climate change i mean carter was the one you know he was an engineer i was an agriculturalist and uh you know he put the solar panels on the yeah

Adnan Hussain: But I mean, he was also somebody who was instrumental in the shift to neoliberal. Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of these policies have their roots before Reagan. But they start, you know, there's already this shift. And so I just thought, though, that there was an amazing contrast, you could say, between some solidarity that was expressed about the condition of Palestine as important to the region as a whole, that had mobilized the Arab embargo to what we see today, step by step, the fragmentation through the peace processes, starting first with the Egypt, Camp David Accords that undermined that solidarity. and then to, you know, the Oslo period, which authorized in a way being able to start opening relations because there was a peace process. And, you know, even if it was still going very slow, if you ignored the fact that the occupation was ongoing and that settlement had ramped up and, you know, the illegal settlements had ramped up, you could then you know, make a bargain like Jordan does, like, you know, Morocco later and other countries. It's legitimized, you know, to end the Arab kind of boycott of Israel and to normalize relations, which then isolated.

Ariel Salzmann: Yeah, and this leads to the two-state solution, which, you know, is never going to happen. You know, never going to happen. It was, you know, no one in the region, I don't think Jordan wanted to tell you the truth. And And probably Egypt didn't want it either, you know, fearing, you know, fearing, you know, possibility of nodes of, you know, resistance occurring outside of its border. So, you know, that myth of a Palestinian state was sustained by Oswald, you know, by, you know, and then, you know, New coalitions with Russia, you know, Russian Federation in Europe, and all these other, you know, diplomatic initiatives, you know, were based on this, this faulty premise, and of course, the ongoing violence of, you know, the pseudo peace.

Adnan Hussain: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, I think that's a good point on which to conclude the discussion about war and peace as two sides of a violent system. And we look forward to our next discussion talking really about, you know, the wider nexus, you could say, the U.S. greater Israel nexus and American Jews and Christian Zionists. So I look forward to that discussion coming soon.