1. This THREAD has everything.

Jus cogens.

Hans Kelsen.

The Israel-Egypt conflict.

The right of self-defense and Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Buckle. Up. 🧵

2. On August 1, 1951, the UN Security Council met to discuss "Restrictions imposed by Egypt on the passage of ships through the Suez Canal" bound for Israel.

3. Mahmoud Fawzi, Egypt's UN representative, claimed that a state of war still existed between Egypt and Israel, despite their 1949 General Armistice Agreement, and that Egypt retained its belligerent right to visit and search neutral vessels for war materials.

4. Fawzi grounded this right in "the right of self-preservation and self-defence, which ... transcends all other rights," and even hinted that Article 51 of the UN Charter may not limit the right of self-defense.

5. And then ...

... it happened.

Fawzi quoted Hans Kelsen ...

... suggesting that the right of self-defense was ...

jus cogens.

A peremptory norm of general international law that "cannot be affected by any treaty," not even the Charter.