The European Journal of International Law Vol. 31 no. 3 EJIL (2020), Vol. 31 No. 3, 1055–1085 doi:10.1093/ejil/chaa055 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EJIL Ltd. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Negotiating the Illegal: On the United Nations and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine, 1967–2020 Ardi Imseis *   Abstract This article takes a critical look at the United Nations’ commitment to the international rule of law through an examination of its position on occupied Palestine post 1967. Occupation of enemy territory is meant to be temporary, and the occupying power may not rightfully claim sovereignty over such territory. Since 1967, Israel has systematically and forcibly altered the status of occupied Palestine, with the aim of annexing, de jure or de facto, most or all of it. While the UN has focused on the legality of Israel’s discrete violations of hu- manitarian and human rights law, it has paid scant attention to the legality of Israel’s occu- pation regime as a whole. By what rationale can it be said that Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestine remains legal? This article argues that the occupation has become illegal for its systematic violation of at least three jus cogens norms. Although an increasing number of commentators have subscribed to this view, little attention has been paid to its relevant inter- national legal consequences which dictate a paradigm shift away from negotiations as the condition precedent for ending the occupation, as unanimously af frmed by the international community through the UN. 1 Introduction This article addresses the United Nations (hereinafter UN or ‘the Organization’) position on the legal status of Israel’s prolonged military occupation of the State of Palestine, known as the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). It claims that the UN’s failure to consistently and clearly take a principled position on the very legality of Israel’s half-century ‘temporary’ occupation of the OPT exposes a fundamental chasm. The UN’s position has ostensibly been rooted in its commitment to the post-World War II * Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. Email: a.imseis@queensu.ca. I am indebted to John Dugard, Richard Falk and Michael Lynk for comments received on earlier drafts of this article. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/31/3/1055/5903619 by guest on 07 November 2021