Book contents
- The United Nations and the Question of Palestine
- The United Nations and the Question of Palestine
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Table of Cases
- Table of Treaties and International Instruments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Interwar Period
- 3 1947: The UN Plan of Partition for Palestine
- 4 1948 and After: The UN and the Palestinian Refugees
- 5 1967 and After: The UN and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- 6 2011 and After: Membership of Palestine in the UN
- 7 Conclusion
- Postscript
- Index
5 - 1967 and After: The UN and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2023
- The United Nations and the Question of Palestine
- The United Nations and the Question of Palestine
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Table of Cases
- Table of Treaties and International Instruments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Interwar Period
- 3 1947: The UN Plan of Partition for Palestine
- 4 1948 and After: The UN and the Palestinian Refugees
- 5 1967 and After: The UN and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- 6 2011 and After: Membership of Palestine in the UN
- 7 Conclusion
- Postscript
- Index
Summary
Under international law, occupation is meant to be temporary and occupying powers cannot be sovereign in the territory they occupy. In contrast, since 1967 Israel has systematically altered the status of the OPT with the aim of annexing it, de facto or de jure. During this time, though the UN has focused on documenting the legality of a range of individual violations of international law by the occupying power, scant attention has been paid by the Organization to the legality of the occupation regime as a whole. Emphasis has instead been placed on encouraging the parties to bring the occupation to an end through continued, though widely discredited, bilateral negotiations. By what rationale can it be said that Israels occupation remains either legal or legitimate in the absence of good faith on its part in negotiating the occupation’s end? How can its end reasonably be made contingent on negotiations between occupier and occupied? This chapter argues that the UN’s failure to take a more principled position on the very legality of Israel’s half-century ‘temporary’ occupation of the self-determination unit of the Palestinian people is demonstrative of the maintenance of Palestine’s legal subalternity in the UN system, under a different guise.
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- The United Nations and the Question of PalestineRule by Law and the Structure of International Legal Subalternity, pp. 172 - 216Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023