“International pressure has to be able to convince the Israeli government that it can not continue violating international law as it has until now”

Stéphane Hessel. French diplomat.  Collaborated in the composing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Q- Are you still hopeful in the application of the Declaration of Human Rights?

In the moment that we passed the Universal Declaration in 1948, we had just gotten through a terrible war that caused more destruction than any other in history.  We thought we had to put down in written form our basic values which would be sovereign throughout the world.  It had to be good text, but strong as well.  And it wasn’t just that, but the values that we wrote about in that text are still absolutely valid today.  Not one thing needs to be changed, not a single word:  human rights, equality between men and women, the right to health, to education…It’s all there.

Q- But it’s not being carried out…

But 60 years later we have to admit that there are many countries that do not apply these rights.  It’s true that when we wrote it we thought that it was a common ideal that had to be achieved and we still haven’t done it.  We were hoping that 60 years later the majority of countries would have implemented this Declaration.  And it must be said that in the last eight years, under the administration of George W. Bush there has been a backward movement as human rights have been violated by the United States, the most powerful country in the world as well as another country that was created by them in 1948:  Israel.  I was there in 1948 working for the United Nations and thought “finally, the poor Jews that have had to suffer through the terrible shah, will have their own state.”  But we were convinced that it had to be a state that could exist as well with the other Arab state, as it had been agreed upon among the international community.  When we started seeing that year after the Israelis didn’t respect international law, that it was violating it by putting settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and behaving themselves in a brutal way with their Palestinian neighbors, our sadness began to grow. 

"Israel wants security and the Palestinians have the right to their own state, international pressure must be strong enough to convince the Israeli government that it can’t continue to violate international law as it has until now"

After 1967 and the Six Day War, we thought that it would be the moment that peace would arrive.  The Security Council adopted its resolutions 242 and 338 and requested two countries.  I still think today that there is no other possible solution for the problem.  If Israel wants security and the Palestinians have the right to their own state, international pressure must be strong enough to convince the Israeli government that it can’t continue to violate international law as it has until now.

Q- When it was created, Israel represented the rights of the people.  Seventy years later some of the most brutal violations of human rights have been seen in Palestine.  How has it gotten to this point?

Throughout the last seventy years, Israeli propaganda has been strong.  It has been repeating the idea that Israel is a small country surrounded by millions of Arabs who furthermore weren’t in need of a state.  They have said that the Arabs could leave the country to the Israelis, that they were the true owners because it was God that had given it to them.  So they thought, why didn’t the Arabs go to another country, to Syria, Jordan or any other place with other Arabs?  This propaganda was so good that people who at first were in defense of two states stopped speaking out in favor of it.  They remembered the Holocaust and kept reaffirming the idea of the importance of Israeli security.  And the international community was embarrassed and weak, as it has continued being so since the War of 1967 to the War of 1973, from the first intifada to the second...Every time that the United States has united Israelis and Palestinians saying that this time it will achieve peace, the Israelis have continued their policy of settlements that go against any kind of peace.  

Q- Will anything change?

That’s what we are asking ourselves.  Today in Barcelona, another day in Paris or in any other city, we are demonstrating to say that Palestine has to have its own country.  And do we have any hope?  Perhaps.  There is a new president in Washington and he must deal with seeing that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is part of the solution of a bigger problem between the United States and the Middle East.  If Obama has the right advisors he will have to see that Israel must be pressured.  Not to destroy it, but to actually make it more secure, because the security of Israel depends more and more on the existence of a Palestine state that will be recognized by the international community as Israel will be recognized by the Arab states that have already signed saying they will do so the moment that Palestine has its own state.

Q- Can Palestine be once again, 60 years later, a symbol of human rights and peace for the world?

That is exactly what we need.  This year, 2009, with the arrival of the new president to the White House, with a Europe that is getting stronger, with Spain having an important role, is when we need to have a new vision.  To be dynamic, as Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the 40s.  If we have this new vision, we will have to say to Israel that it needs international support and that it can’t survive without American backing.  And that it won’t have this unless it accepts the establishment of a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians.  We hope that President Obama and Europe will be strong enough to continue on this path to peace and security for the Palestinians and Israelis.

Q- 60 years ago, from that vision of Roosevelt and what was left of Europe came the United Nations.  What now is the role that Europe should have facing a new vision from Washington?

Europe is still building itself.  It started with six countries, then nine, and more and more until the current 27.  But it still hasn’t been totally decided what the purpose is for this process:  Just for security, to protect itself from Russia?  Or to have good trade relations between them and to be prosperous?  No.  Europe should build itself because it is the base of international law and of human rights in the world.  This idea of human rights comes out of Europe, we were the first ones to say that human beings must have their rights just for the sake of being so.  Now we must keep pushing this idea and advancing it and if we’re the ones to do it we’ll have an important role in the new organization of international society.  This global society of tomorrow needs different poles:  Europe, China, India, America… They must learn to live together and we have this wonderful organization, the United Nations, for which I started working in 1946 when I was only 29-years-old.  Now that I’m 91 I still believe that we need some strong United Nations in which Europe is able to have a basic role in reminding the others that they must protect human rights and international law.