Investcorp Lecture Theatre entry is via St Antony’s College at 62 Woodstock Road.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there has been a continuing though vacillating gulf between the requirements of international law and the United Nations (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.

Ardi Imseis is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. Previously, he was Legal Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA, 2002–2014), Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (2008–2019), and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School (2001–2002). Imseis has provided testimony before the UN Security Council, Human Rights Council, and Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, among other international fora. His scholarship has appeared widely, including in the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, and Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.