The Astro-Nomos: On International Legal Paradigms and the Legal Status of the West Bank

14(3) Washington University Global Studies Law Review (2015), Forthcoming

35 Pages Posted: 12 Aug 2014 Last revised: 26 May 2020

See all articles by Orna Ben-Naftali

Orna Ben-Naftali

T; The Emile Zola Chair for Human Rights

Rafi Reznik

Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

Date Written: August 12, 2014

Abstract

The continuous Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory may well have exhausted the international community and exasperated the Palestinians, but it still stimulates the Israeli legal imagination. In 2012, the Israeli government established an expert committee to examine the status of Jewish construction in the West Bank. The committee's report concluded that from an international legal perspective, the West Bank is not occupied territory; the law of belligerent occupation is not applicable to the area; the "prevailing view" is that Jewish settlements are lawful; and that Israel has a valid claim to sovereignty over the territory. The article, combining a doctrinal analysis with both Cover's notion of 'Nomos and Narrative' and Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' posits that the report is epistemologically groundless and ethically blemished. The committee's reading of international law substitutes an ideology for professionalism. The ideology, resurrecting the long discredited colonialist/Orientalist paradigm, reflects an idiosyncratic utopian vision, one that is simultaneously hegemonic and insular. Consequently, its legal position is methodologically extraneous to the structure of international law, substantively at odds with the compelling commitment of the international community to self-determination, and ethically dystopian.

Keywords: Belligerent Occupation; Occupied Palestinian Territory; OPT; Settlements; the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949; Article 49 paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; Legal Aspects of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict; Lawfare; Robert Cover; Thomas Kuhn; Junk Science; Expert Committees; Law & Utopia

Suggested Citation

Ben-Naftali, Orna and Reznik, Rafi, The Astro-Nomos: On International Legal Paradigms and the Legal Status of the West Bank (August 12, 2014). 14(3) Washington University Global Studies Law Review (2015), Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2479234 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2479234

Orna Ben-Naftali (Contact Author)

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The Emile Zola Chair for Human Rights ( email )

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Rafi Reznik

Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute ( email )

43 Jabotinsky Street
Jerusalem, 9214116
Israel

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