Introduction: Tracing History, Politics and Law as a Vindication of Palestinian Liberation

Abstract

Today, the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the continued dislocation of Palestinians for nearly a hundred years through brute force – combined with the former’s discursive hegemony over its victims – remain as major obstacles to the construction of a peaceful and stable international political order in the Middle East. The so-called Palestinian problem remains the key to understand the failure of the Middle Eastern sub-system to produce sustainable peace in the region. This brief introduction to the special issue seeks to explain the general perspective and summarise main arguments of the contributors who have approached the issue of Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lenses of various fields of study such as international law, foreign policy analysis and discourse analysis. As will be seen, all the authors offer notable critical reflections that challenge established understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the mainstream Western media and scholarly literature.