Ezra's Bookshelf

The United Nations and the Question of Palestine

by Ardi Imseis · 311 pages · ~5.5 hrs

Foreign PolicyLaw & Justice

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International law scholar Ardi Imseis examines the United Nations' handling of the Palestinian question from 1947 to the present, asking what this case reveals about the organization's claim to be the guardian of international law. His detailed legal analysis traces how the UN partitioned Palestine, created the state of Israel, and then managed (or failed to manage) the consequences through decades of resolutions, reports, and peacekeeping operations. Imseis argues that the UN's treatment of Palestine has systematically departed from the legal principles it claims to uphold, creating a gap between rhetoric and practice that undermines the entire international legal order. He examines key moments - the partition resolution, the aftermath of the 1967 war, the Oslo process - showing how legal frameworks were bent or abandoned to accommodate political realities. Imseis, a professor at the University of Cambridge, writes as both a legal scholar and someone with practical UN experience. His analysis will be controversial for many readers, but he engages seriously with contrary arguments and grounds his claims in documented sources. For anyone interested in international law, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the gap between international institutions' stated principles and their actual practices, this book provides rigorous if challenging analysis.

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