Palestine as a Litmus Test for Transitional Justice

Abstract

We are currently witnessing another sustained and significant mobilization of people across the globe, coming on the heels of the racial justice uprising of 2020. This postscript of the International Journal for Transitional Justice's (IJTJ) Special Issue on Race, Racism and Transitional Justice reflects on whether transitional justice as a field can offer meaningful avenues for rectifying past and ongoing racial injustices, by examining the concrete and pressing example of Palestine. It argues that transitional justice has never fully grappled with the 'question' of Palestine, which was a live one at its birth and remains a live one today. It concludes that it is an open question whether the appeal of transitional justice to the rule of law and universal principles in the current international context can be divorced from how the rule of law operates in practice and how it selectively applies to racialized others.