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Book Review - Victor Kattan's From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949 (2009)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Sujith Xavier

Abstract

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Victor Kattan's “From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891–1949” is an archival excavation of the Israeli-Palestinian (Arab-Israeli) conflict and its origins. This review will examine the contours of Kattan's book followed by a brief examination of objectivity in academic scholarship often enunciated through the concept of ‘balance’ as it relates to those scholars (like Kattan) working on the conflict. Finally, this review will explore some of the weakness of the arguments that Kattan advances.

Type
Developments
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 9 , September 2010 , pp. 1038 - 1045
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Victor Kattan, From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891–1949 XVII (2009).Google Scholar

2 See, e.g. Francis A. Boyle, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law 26 (2003); John B Quigley, The Case for Palestine: an International Law Perspective 3–87 (2005): both Boyle and Quigley do not provide an in-depth analysis of the Mandate and the ensuing debates (Boyle provides a description on page 26 while Quigley devotes his first three sections to the history of Palestine). James Crawford, The Creation of the States in International Law 421–448 (2006); Antonio Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples; A Legal Reappraisal 230–247 (1995).Google Scholar

3 For the most recent scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict and international law, see John Strawson Partitioning Palestine: Legal Fundamentalism and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (2010).Google Scholar

4 Boyle (note 2); Quigley (note 2); Crawford (note 2); Cassese (note 2); for example, Cassese provides a historical account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and he nonetheless briefly refers to the Hussain-McMahon correspondence. An exposition of the historical significance of the correspondence is left out. Quigley and Boyle also do not offer such analysis of these historical materials. See, e.g. Francis A. Boyle, The Creation of the State of Palestine 1 European Journal of International Law (Eur. J. Int'l. L.) 301, 307 (1990); James Crawford, The Creation of the State of Palestine: Too Much Too Soon? 1 Eur. J. Int'l. L. 307, 313 (1990).Google Scholar

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