Of Tactics, Illegal Occupation and the Boundaries of Legal Capability: A Reply to Ardi Imseis

Abstract

Abstract This contribution engages with Ardi Imseis’s article ‘Negotiating the Illegal: On the United Nations and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine, 1967–2020’. In reply, I contemplate whether an occupation’s legal status can or should affect the requirement that an occupying power must withdraw from the territory that it controls. I consider Imseis’s claim that it is necessary to declare that an occupation has become illegal to move beyond the tension that exists between the requirements of state responsibility and a political preference for negotiations. I question the effectiveness of Imseis’s proposed approach, argue that the duty to terminate an occupation is a positive legal duty that exists regardless of an occupation’s legal status and suggest that the negotiation process cannot be completely uncoupled from the withdrawal requirement. In conclusion, I suggest that grounding calls to terminate occupation in the principle of temporality and the international consensus prohibiting the acquisition of territory by force better reflects international law’s capacity to contribute to an occupation’s termination.