The internationalization of the Palestine question in international law: The 1947 UN General Assembly Special Session in light of the third world perspective

In order to understand why the Palestine question—one of the most controversial issues in international law—remains unresolved to this day, it is necessary to critically examine how the issue was first brought to the agenda of the United Nations (UN) and on what legal basis it was addressed. Existing literature on the treatment of the Palestine question in international law tends to focus primarily on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 1947, which proposed the partition of Palestine, as well as the debates that preceded this resolution. However, there is a notable gap in the literature concerning a comprehensive analysis of the 1947 UN General Assembly Special Session during which the Palestine question was formally introduced to the UN agenda and the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was established. Yet this Special Session represents the initial phase in which the UN's approach to the Palestine question began to take shape and, as such, constitutes a critical turning point for understanding the process within a holistic and historical context. This study offers a critical analysis of the debates held during the 1947 UN General Assembly Special Session through the lens of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). The analysis reveals that although the decision-making processes of this Special Session were framed within a discourse of legal legitimacy, they essentially reflected the interests of the dominant political powers of the time. Consequently, international law in this context functioned not on the basis of impartial and universal principles, but along the lines of prevailing power relations.