A handshake between the president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat and the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sealed, in 1995, the most important attempt at peace between Jews and Palestinians. The Oslo agreements provided for the joining of efforts to end the conflicts between the two peoples and the opening of negotiations over the occupied territories. Rabin and Arafat were Nobel Peace Prize winners and there were those who bet that violence would be stopped in the Middle East. History has shown that it is not. Almost three decades later, Jews and Palestinians are once again involved in a bloody war, with thousands of innocent people killed, especially children.
For Unicamp International Law professor Luís Renato Vedovato, only within the scope of law is there a way out of war. Vedovato was the guest of the videocast Analyze, a production of the Executive Secretariat for Communication. “Recognizing that Hamas committed violations of law, with deaths and kidnappings of civilians, Israel's reaction was expected, but not in proportion to what has been done”, he states.
According to the professor, with the war, Israel tests its recognition as a Democratic State of Law by not respecting legal norms. Hamas is also subject to international laws that determine its duty not to attack civilians. “Right now, Israel and Hamas are looking for what they want and not what they need. The law is the solution that paves the way for a solution for the future; any decision outside the law is wrong. The law gives us the possibility of thinking about what we need and not what we want.”
In the program, the professor recaps the historical roots of the conflicts between Palestinians and Jews, from the end of the 19th century, when the idea of the State of Israel emerged, until the end of the great wars, when the separation of territories was not accepted by Arab countries . Vedovato also comments on the escalation of terror, the role of Hamas in Middle East politics and how the Palestinian population was oppressed and reduced to the Gaza Strip, with no means of survival.
Another topic discussed is the role of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in attempts to resolve the conflict. Vedovato states that the UN plays an excellent role in the field, mitigating the hardships of people at war, and the General Assembly does its job, but the Security Council has acted very little. “In any case, the UN is very important in preventing major conflicts, so much so that, since the 10th century, this is the first century without major conflicts.”
Watch the program:
