In this roundtable presentation I will discuss the aporias of law, and theories of law and violence, in relation to Palestine and Palestinians in the United States, Palestine, and Lebanon. In particular I am interested in how Palestine articulates the constitutive limits of International and national law in addressing colonization, genocide, underdevelopment, and dehumanization. Law fails, and in many ways is cannot but fail, and yet the spectacle of law in relation to Palestine is still important, and still commands attention. What is law without force, and enforcement? What is the relationship between law and violence in geographies where world breaking violence does not in fact break the world? Drawing on carceral laws and policies that regulate Palestinian life in Lebanon, I am interested in the continuities and ruptures between international and national legal frameworks that construct Palestinians as constitutive outsiders to the nation state, to settler societies, and to the foundational fiction of law itself.

Israel’s latest war on Gaza, the fifth in this century, has turned Gaza into an enclave of unprecedented criminal atrocities. Ethnic cleansing and mass displacement are crimes against humanity. Deliberately targeting civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure are war crimes, as is the use of indiscriminate weapons such as white phosphorus and 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs. Torture and extrajudicial execution of people taken captive, regardless of any alleged crimes they are suspected of, are war crimes. Deprivation of food and water which have created a situation of mass starvation, as well as deliberately targeting children and women and making life—present and future—impossible, and the obliteration of all vestiges of cultural, educational, and healthcare institutions are hallmarks of genocide. All of these crimes are being perpetrated by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza with the full knowledge of the international community. Yet, with the notable exception of South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice, there has been no international mobilization to effectuate a halt to the slaughter and deprivation of humanitarian resources to save Palestinian lives and preserve society in Gaza. Rather, these gross crimes have been denied by the major powers, whether to evade their own obligations under international law or because domestic political interests and geopolitical priorities prevent any alternative to unbridled support for Israel. In this paper, I will use the paradigmatic concept, “states of denial” (Stanley Cohen, 2001), to analyze the phenomenon of knowing and not knowing about suffering and atrocities in Gaza. The objective is to probe how and why state parties—particularly the United States, Germany, other Western governments—and international institutions—particularly the International Criminal Court—that are obligated to abide by and enforce international law have failed not only to act but failed to acknowledge reality itself. These states of denial take several forms, including misinterpreting what is happening in Gaza as a legitimate prerogative of Israeli self-defense, intentionally opting to disbelieve empirical evidence of gross crimes, and sustaining policy traditions that disregard Palestinian national and human rights which are in and of themselves violations of international law. I contend that Gaza is an epic test of the efficacy of international law, and the reasons the international community is failing must be understood.

The study of law in the Middle East has a long, illustrious, and varied genealogy, one that is to a large extent anchored in the fields of history, anthropology, political science, and religious studies. This roundtable will explore the study of law within Middle East Studies from different disciplines and locations, focusing on what centering the transnational Middle East brings to legal studies and theory. Drawn from different fields in the humanities and social sciences and representing different methodological approaches, participants will present new vantages on international law, humanitarian and human rights law, and criminal and family law. Drawing on rich ethnography among lawyers who defended detainees in Guantanamo Bay and have challenged the United States’ attempt to create a zone of exception, the roundtable will question whether accountability for gross crimes is aspirational or impossible. Similarly, the roundtable will examine another site of gross crimes and accountability in Palestine to explore the seeming contradiction between the proliferation of law regarding the Question of Palestine and the lack of legal regulation of Israel’s occupation. In doing so, this example will also shed light on what this contradiction reveals about the relationship between law and power. Pivoting from the plane of international to legal regimes in Turkey and Lebanon, the roundtable will offer insight as to what these sites of inquiry reveal about method and law. By placing recent upheavals in Turkey in the context of a long legacy of constitutional reform, the participant will highlight the counterintuitive role of the law on constitutionalism, liberalism, secularism, sovereignty, and political violence. Finally, in a close reading of a case heard at the civil personal status court in Lebanon, the participant will provide insight on the entwinements of medical expertise, civil registration law, and the colonial, postcolonial, and transnational regulation of gender. In so doing, this discussion will also consider the epistemological implications of different methodological approaches to the same research material. Together, the roundtable will highlight both the value of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of law in the Middle East as well as how such study shapes transnational legal methods and theory.