Suspending Sovereignty: Reassessing the Interlocking of Occupation, Failed and Fragile State , Responsiblity to Protect, and International Trusteeship (Lessons from Lebanon)

This Paper argues that the traditional international legal discourse on occupation fails to reject the condition of international relations, and their governability by international law, at the turn of the 21" century. This Paper suggests re-conceptualizing the concept of occupation by linking it to the discourse of failed andfiagile states and the responsibility to protect. A contemporaneous understanding of occupation needs to reject its transforming relationship to sovereignty. Occupation represents a state of inteference with the external aspect of sovereignty, which ultimately infringes also on the state of internal sovereignty. In contemporary world politics, occupation arises also fiom a chain of successive situations interfering with sovereignty wherein internal sovereignty becomes "vitiated" ("$ailed and fiagile state"), and creates a condition conducive to inteference with external sovereign@ The outcome of this order of impingements on sovereignty represents a state wherein sovereigniy was suspended. The condition of suspended sovereignty triggers the new norm of the responsibility toprotect. This Paper submits that re-vitalization of the concepts of leasehold and trusteeship offers an elegant, perhaps face-saving outlet, hence potentially constructive approach to empower the failed andfiagile state in re-establishing its sovereign plenary control over its territory and ending an occupation-like situation. The analysis of the Lebanese situation is an example of the arguments raised in this Paper and does not fit the traditional post World War II (WWII) occupation legal mould for neither belligerent nor non-belligerent occupation. The complex inter-state relationship linking Lebanon-Syria-Iran-Israel, and which is intricately interlaced in a state-to-non-state actor (MA) web as played out in the relationship between Israel-South Lebanon Army on the one hand, and between Iran, Syria and Lebanon-Hezbollah on the other hand, serve to illustrate the new 2lst century conditions. These conditions press for an updating of the traditional understanding of occupation.