Visiting professors talk Israel through lens of international law

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor of law specializing in international law from Northwestern University, had a conversation with School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) professor and former UN official Ruth Wedgwood on Wednesday. They discussed the merits and faults of using a framework of international law to analyze Israel’s position in the world. The event was hosted by the Israel on Campus Coalition, Hopkins Hillel, StandWithUs and the Department of International Studies.

The talk began with Kontorovich discussing the meaning of international law and the implications of the concept of international law.

“To lay the bases we are going to discuss fully from a perspective of international law which doesn’t necessarily coincide with, comport with what is good or what is just, international law doesn’t necessarily mean that,” Kontorovich said. “We have to first say, what is international law and where does it come from? That itself is a subject of a semester long seminar. There is no international legislature, no international congress that passes laws and rules binding all the countries of the world. In the international legal system, the top level of actors are countries. Any rules must come from the countries themselves and international law in short is the proposition that countries can create rules to bind themselves and each other... in the form of treaties.”

He then tied international law to the history of Israel and the surrounding region, emphasizing strongly how the mandates issued following World War I set up the borders of the State of Israel.

“After World War I, there is the emergence of the League of Nations... through a treaty,” Kontorovich said. “And in that treaty they give it the power to supervise a system in what is known as mandates, that is essentially to set up a system of returning some of the former colonial possessions of the defeated powers of world one into new independent nation states. Article 22 of the League of Nations mandates they are to create a state in this territory called Palestine. The League of Nations said that it should be a national home for the Jewish people... The one particular right that Jews are given in this land is settlement.”

To support his argument that Israel’s borders follow the League of Nations mandate, Kontorovich used comparative historical jurisprudence to point out how Israel has been treated unequally under the view of international law. Specifically, he addressed how other countries in the Middle East had not had an uncontested right to existence throughout history despite the fact that the territories of Israel and the Middle East were created through the same treaty.

“If you don’t recognize the borders of a country in which it was created in, it also calls into question all of the borders of the Middle East, Turkey Syria, Iraq, Kuwait,” Kontorovich said.

Kontorovich stressed that it does not matter in the view of international law whether these drawn borders were good for the Middle East.

“It turns out none of the borders by the League of Nations were good for peace in the Middle East except no one has seen this as a basis for redrawing them,” Kontorivich said.

Following his talk, Ruth Wedgwood of SAIS began a counterargument, using a more political lens at interpreting Israel’s situation. She first brought up the concept of effectivity to explain Israel’s presence in the world.

“Effectivity. If something is sticking for a long period time, it becomes the state of play, it becomes the state of the world,” Wedgwood said.

“I do like these legal brain teasers, but life moves on and the purpose in moving forward is trying to make a sustainable Jewish state... that will keep Palestinians happy. So I’m not sure of this kind of ‘legal debate trumping normative rules’ because things do change in the world.”

Wedgwood said that politics is a good starting point to remedy issues in Israel.

“I would think much less of this archaeology of legal matters. My lesson from my 15 years of fooling around in politics at the U.N. is that you have to have a bespoke diplomacy, a personal one-on-one diplomacy. You have to do favors for people... and you build up the good will that really when push comes to shove, they will vote for you,” Wedgwood said. “So I guess my other point is that in my personal view, Israel has to be much more cognizant of the needs of the Palestinian community in order to prosper and be better integrated, to break down ethnic segregation... to make it a much more heterogeneous population and really try to give Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank an economic stake in society.”

Professor of International Relations Steven David was present in the audience of the event and spoke of how the talk was engaging despite his own disagreements with Kontorovich’s message.

“It was a provocative discussion. I agree with some of what was said. I felt that Professor Kontorovich made a lot of compelling points, but it adopted what I considered to be a very narrow legal framework,” David said. “He ignored the broader political issues which really determine Middle East politics, not what’s going to win out in a law school forum or in a moot court atmosphere. But I thought he did a very good job.”

Students found the differing perspectives offered by the exchange between Kontorovich and Wedgwood to be enriching.

“I thought it was enlightening,” sophomore Jared Mayer said. “Overall, it was very interesting to get both a legal and a more political perspective as to what Israel should do and as to what Israel needs to do.”

Freshman Sean Jost echoed this sentiment and especially appreciated the presentation of the legal perspective.

“I thought it was very interesting. I kind of liked how the two speakers offered two very different perspectives on the issues. I thought it very interesting how they really tried to distinguish between law and politics,” Jost said, “I liked how the talk was about the law aspect because I know when you try to get into the political aspect, it gets very muddling and I liked when they were just talking what the laws are. They’re on paper, they’re treaties and when it comes down to these conflicts, it comes down to interpretations of the law.”