On Palestine and the death of the west’s international legal order
JVL Introduction
Following a 12-year career at the United Nations, working both for UNRWA and UNHCR, Ardi Imseis is now a scholar and practitioner of public international law at Queens University, Canada.
He argues that ” the anti-Apartheid Palestine freedom struggle is now the socio-political cause of our time, an issue on which the measurement of our collective morality turns and with it, how we read, understand and apply international law.”
He agrees with those who say that violations of the same legal principles or similar and even worse levels of atrocity are widespread – think Rwanda, Sudan, Ukraine, and Yemen.
But what makes Palestine different, is “who is perpetrating it, under what pretense, and the extent to which it uniquely belies the origin story of the post-WWII western liberal international legal order.”
For him and many others, “Palestine remains the litmus test by which the integrity and sustainability of the international legal order is to be judged.”
It is failing badly at present.
RK
H/t Robert Jones
This article was originally published by EJIL Talk! The blog of the European Journal of International Law on Wed 26 Nov 2025. Read the original here.
On Palestine and the death of the west’s international legal order
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I am neither Jewish not Palestinian but I am so aware of the situation which has been ongoing since the Nakba of1948. This is an excellent analysis and summation of the crisis of liberal democracy writ large. I take no solace in the legal aspects apart from the obvious hypocrisy as has been pointed out. What has tormented me for decades and enhanced the more I read and understand is the utter lack of any form of morality or reflection of Christian, and Jewish values of humanity, respect or justice. This attitude has become the norm to torment the occupied peoples but sadly it is the history of Colonial occupation worldwide by European countries for hundreds of years and Palestinians are but one facet of this despicable legacy from “The Doctrine of Discovery’ to the present. It makes me ill and I see no light at the end of this dark tunnel. At least in WWII and the Holocaust there was with the success of Allied military forces a temporary hiatus and with The UN Conventions of Warfare and Genocide. Those are now forgotten and ignored and so what future is there for humanity with Liberal Democracies making pious statements with unflinching hypocrisy as the norm and providing no role models for developing countries still struggling to overcome the scars of violent occupation.
What it all seems to come down to in the end is, the threat is not on our doorstep so why get involved. The threat may approach our neighbourhood so lets supply those who are fighting the threat with the means to keep it away, and while they are fighting each other they might leave us alone.