In “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said described exile as a “jealous state” that can produce “an exaggerated sense of group solidarity, and a passionate hostility to outsiders.” This paper analyzes works of contemporary Iraqi and Palestinian fiction by exiled authors, reading international law as a force that alienates displaced and exiled Iraqi and Palestinian communities, rather than as a force ideally positioned to ameliorate suffering as is often uncritically depicted in human rights literature. Is international law an embodiment of Said’s “jealous state”—a field exhibiting “passionate hostility to outsiders”? Can the subjects that international law purports to serve, including displaced and exiled people, be understood as these “outsiders”? Alternatively, does international law require structural “exile”—critical distance from national laws deeply rooted in prioritization and protection of sovereignty? I analyze Shimon Ballas’s Outcast (1991), Sinan Antoon’s I’Jaam (2007), and stories by Ghassan Kanafani. Ballas, an Iraqi Jew who wrote in Hebrew, spoke of nightmares in which Arabic took “revenge” on him for forgoing writing in his native language. Ballas’s description of competing identities offers a way to interpret international law—a limited structure that problematically resists people’s abilities to maintain seemingly contradictory identities. These identities may be both victim and perpetrator, or survivor and revolutionary (Mahmood Mamdani 2001). International law encourages categorization—refugee or citizen, exile or patriot. Antoon’s novel is a manuscript written by imprisoned protagonist Furat, which lacks diacritical marks essential for understanding the text. Furat’s only possible resistance against a tyranny of indecipherability—being held on unknown charges—is to produce a deliberately indecipherable text. Through Antoon’s meditation on illegibility, we can consider whether international law places its subjects in a “jealous state” by resisting being legible for those it purports to serve. Kanafani’s “Letter from Gaza” (1956) is written from the perspective of a man in Gaza writing to a Palestinian friend in exile. The writer rejects a life abroad and challenges his friend to return. Kanafani shifts the focus from exile, to the necessity of return. Through analyzing these works, I explore how Said’s “jealous state” facilitates an understanding of exile as neither solely the valorous condition of a revolutionary, nor a form of victimhood. Complicating the bounds of “home and homelessness” (Ella Shohat 1989) I examine how international law has historically pushed its subjects to reflect the law, rather than reflecting the complicated, contradictory realities and identities of its displaced and exiled subjects.