Nadim Khoury - The Shadow of Oslo is Only Getting Darker
Channel: masahat مساحات
Date: 2019-06-09

Talk by Nadim Khoury during the fourth edition of The Question of Syria organized by the Syrian Peace Action Centre (SPACE).

The Shadow of Oslo is Only Getting Darker:
Coming of age during the “peace process,” my trajectory was shaped by the Oslo agreements. Twenty-five years ago, my generation was promised freedom through statehood. What it received was colonialism through peace. Today Gaza is an open-air prison that is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster. Trigger-happy Israeli soldiers shoot and kill with impunity. Palestinians have two governments and no state. Palestinian society is shattered, fragmented, and divided. This trajectory marked by false promises raises a nagging question: where does one look for hope while hopeless? With time, I have found it in the least obvious of places: in being a problem, rather than looking for a solution; in the past, rather than in the future.

Nadim Khoury is an Associate Professor II in international studies/ peace & conflict and a former postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at the Arctic University of Norway—University of Tromsø. His pedagogical interests include the history of political theory, nationalism, the politics of memory, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has published on these issues in the European Journal of International Relations, Nations and Nationalism, Constellations and different co-edited volumes. Currently he is completing a book manuscript that deals with the ways enemy nations negotiate their histories during peace processes.