The United Nations and the Question of Palestine

This book will be of interest to international lawyers, UN officials, policymakers, and scholars. It urges a critical examination of the UN's handling of the question of Palestine and how the organization can discharge its functions more effectively, in line with international law and justice.

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Contrary to conventional wisdom, there has been a continuing though vacillating gulf between the requirements of international law and the UN on the question of Palestine. This book explores the UN's management of the longest-running problem on its agenda, critically assessing tensions between the organization's position and international law. What forms has the UN's failure to respect international law taken, and with what implications? The author critically interrogates the received wisdom regarding the UN's fealty to the international rule of law, in favour of what is described as an international rule by law. This book demonstrates that through the actions of the UN, Palestine and its people have been committed to a state of what the author calls 'international legal subalternity', according to which the promise of justice through international law is repeatedly proffered under a cloak of political legitimacy furnished by the international community, but its realization is interminably withheld.