Introduction

Summary

It is, I believe, legitimate to ask whether there is a substantial role for international law in international relations in general and in the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a conflict rooted in historical, national, geographic, ethnic and religious elements, and the actors rarely consult international law books before taking action. In Chapter 1 of the book, I attempt to answer this question by stating that, although international law is not a dominant factor, nevertheless, it has played a major and, at times, a crucial part in the development of the narratives of the parties and in attempts to solve the disputes. Another problem is that some politicians feel that law is an inhibiting factor. Former Israel Defence Minister Ezer Weizman writes, concerning the negotiations at Camp David 1978, ‘I was also perturbed by the large number of jurists in the Egyptian delegation – as in the Israeli and American groups, there are lawyers who find a solution to every problem, I observed, and there are those who find a problem for every solution. Camp David teemed with the second kind’.