The heritage of settler colonial ‘Oslo’: Claudia Vlad, Cultural Heritage in Palestine: Practices of Grassroots Resistance Under Settler Colonialism and the Oslo Agreements Impasse, PhD dissertation, University College Dublin, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

The heritage of settler colonial ‘Oslo’: Claudia Vlad, Cultural Heritage in Palestine: Practices of Grassroots Resistance Under Settler Colonialism and the Oslo Agreements Impasse, PhD dissertation, University College Dublin, 2026

14Oct26

Abstract: Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, this thesis explores the role of cultural heritage in Palestine within the context of ongoing settler colonialism and the Oslo liberal peace model. Palestinian cultural heritage is a vibrant arena of resistance, situated between loss, displacement and neoliberal visions of a future “state-to-be”. Despite enduring decades of dispossession, violence, and external interventions, the practices surrounding Palestinian heritage flourished, showcasing heritage’s role in envisioning decolonial imaginaries against erasure and occupation. The research is guided by three main questions: (1) How does discourse shape cultural resistance about land in both local and global contexts? (2) In what ways do Palestinian heritage organisations reproduce the land as a site for an envisioned national future, utilising cultural heritage as a tool of resistance and spatial reimagination? (3) What are the “trade-offs” faced by these practices given the evolution of settler colonialism and the current impasse of the Oslo framework? The study begins by engaging with Smith’s concept of the “Authorized Heritage Discourse” (AHD) and the ideological role of human rights. It shows that Palestinian practitioners do not simply adopt global, supposedly neutral paradigms such as AHD and human rights frameworks; instead, they strategically repurpose these discourses to gain legitimacy, amplify Palestinian narratives, and carve out space for decolonial perspectives within international settings that often marginalise Palestinian voices. Building on theoretical frameworks from Anderson and Chatterjee, the research further explores how Palestinian heritage practitioners transcend Western models of nation-building by reimagining community and territory in innovative ways. Against settler colonial strategies of erasure and the commodification of heritage (museumification and “Disneyfication”), Palestinian NGOs enact “deruination”, transforming heritage sites into living, communal spaces. These practices are embodied and communal, grounded in everyday nationalism and the ethos of sumud, or steadfast perseverance in the face of dispossession. Finally, the thesis addresses the complex political terrain and the “trade-offs” inherent in resistance through heritage work, particularly in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo process institutionalised a Palestinian “state-to-be” without sovereignty, deepening Israeli control and dependence on international donors. The rise of the liberal peace paradigm has professionalized and fragmented Palestinian activism, privileging project-based work and individual gain over collective resistance. Mechanisms such as the “Anti-Terrorism Clause” are analysed as tools of governance that depoliticise and regulate Palestinian activism, including heritage organisations, through conditional aid and biopolitical controls. Despite these limitations, Palestinian heritage organisations are not passive. They actively negotiate, resist, adapt, and sometimes subvert donor and Oslo-imposed limitations through hybrid strategies – pragmatic negotiation, everyday acts of refusal, and creative reinvention. Therefore, I showcase how the struggle for liberation remains ongoing and aspirational, with resistance constantly being renegotiated within the shifting boundaries of power, conditionality, and settler colonialism.

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