EUME
2025/ 2026

Eli Osheroff

Recognition as Decolonization: An Intellectual-Cultural History of the Two-State Solution, 1948-1988

Portrait of Eli Osheroff

Eli Osheroff is a historian of the modern Middle East, with a focus on Arab political and intellectual history and the Arab-Zionist conflict. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Truman Institute, at the Jacob Robinson Institute at the Hebrew University, and in the Dan David Society of Fellows at Tel Aviv University. His first book, based on his doctoral dissertation, is forthcoming from the Van Leer Institute and deals with Arab political imagination from the late Ottoman period to 1948. The book focuses on Arab visions for an independent Palestine and the place of Jewish settlers in the future Arab state. Eli’s articles have appeared in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, the Israel-Palestine Review, and other venues. In addition to his academic work, Eli is also a regular contributor to the Forum for Regional Thinking, a think tank of Israeli Middle East scholars seeking to understand Israel’s place in the region from a critical perspective. In the academic year 2025/26, he is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.

Recognition as Decolonization: An Intellectual-Cultural History of the Two-State Solution, 1948-1988

The November 1988 declaration of independence by the PLO marked a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. For the first time, the Palestinian leadership ceremoniously embraced the international principle of partition, thereby recognizing the state of Israel. This research aims to address a central question arising from this declaration: What shifts in Arab discourse about Jewish history and Israeli society occurred between 1948 and 1988 that enabled the Palestinian national movement to compromise on its most significant aspiration – an unpartitioned, independent homeland – while still viewing this as a moment of liberation? The study approaches this question through discourse analysis, drawing on two primary sets of sources. The first examines Arab debates on Palestine, Israeli society, and Jewish history as documented in periodicals, newspapers, and literature from the Arab world. The second focuses on diplomatic exchanges between Arabs, Jews, and other intermediaries, preserved in the archives of the State of Israel and various international institutions. A key hypothesis of this research is that recognition of the “Other” and anti-colonial discourse in the Palestinian context were not mutually exclusive. Rather, engaging with Jewish history and Israeli society was integral to shaping the Palestinian vision of liberation.
 

 

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