Ahead of June’s European elections, the French left is divided over Gaza. Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian jurist and activist standing for France Insoumise, tells Jacobin why it’s shameful for left-wingers to fail to defend Palestinians’ rights.
Franco-Palestinian lawyer Rima Hassan speaks in Villepinte, Paris, on March 16, 2024. (Bertrand Guay / AFP via Getty Images)
“I want to be a defender of human rights that takes the letter of international law seriously.” Rima Hassan is clear about how she’ll differ from most members of the European Parliament. A Franco-Palestinian jurist and activist, she is running on the left-wing France Insoumise list for June’s EU elections.
Born stateless in the al-Nayrab camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria, Hassan moved to France in the early 2000s before acquiring French nationality in 2010 at the age of eighteen. Her master’s thesis at the Sorbonne was a comparative study on how international law has treated apartheid South Africa and Israel. She founded the Observatory of Refugee Camps in 2019 and then the Action Palestine collective in the wake of the October 7 attacks and Israel’s ensuing invasion of Gaza.
Hassan sat down with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler for an extended conversation on the European elections, the current war, and how Israel can be held to account.
Harrison Stetler
If elected, you will be arriving at the EU Parliament at a time of immense international crisis, in Europe and far beyond. What are your priorities if you’re elected?
Rima Hassan
I’m running because I support the program of my electoral list and, more broadly, that of France Insoumise. Like my potential fellow members of the European Parliament (MEPs), I fully back the pledges we’ve made, whether on agricultural issues, international politics, fighting poverty, or ecological and social issues.
In France, the question of Palestine had been brushed under the rug for years.
But I’m also running as a response to the political moment that we’re in and the issues in which I’m involved both personally and professionally. Everything is linked. We’re in a situation today where many ideologies and crises are leading us toward disaster, and we need a compass to guide us through all this. I want to uphold a compass that I’ve had for a very long time: international law, as a bulwark against rights violations. This obviously applies to the Palestinian question, which is in the spotlight now because of the current crisis. The same also goes for more specifically “European” issues, whether that means migration, which I’ve been working on for ten years, or poverty and homelessness. There’s about one million people living on the streets in Europe. All these issues are about how we treat what the anthropologist Michel Agier calls “undesirables,” or people that society wants to ignore.
Harrison Stetler
Politics across Europe is increasingly turning away from these types of concerns or standards. With the Left again divided, it seems that the long-running rise of the far right will again be confirmed this summer. Is there still a window of opportunity to reverse this trajectory?
Rima Hassan
We need to focus on three things: the battle of narratives, political unity, and policy proposals. The fight over narratives is about the idea of a society that we want to live in, one that is not structured around hatred of the other or where we are systematically obsessed with religion, skin color, or social origin. We’ve collectively failed in this fight because there’s a major deficit of representation in politics today, of people who have immigrant roots, saying what that means. Integration isn’t something to be dictated from on high; it has to be something lived. We’ve not learned to address racism in a structural way. Deep down, I believe that the racism in our societies is deeply linked to our colonial histories. You cannot separate the two.
There’s a major deficit of representation in politics today, of people who have immigrant roots.
Secondly, there’s the fight for unity. Our job in these European elections, and hopefully in the next presidential elections, is to rally people who saw hope in the 2022 Nouvelle Union Populaire écologique et sociale (NUPES) alliance. Manon Aubry [France Insoumise’s leading candidate in the European elections] has said that she’d be ready to cede her place at the head of the list if that was the price of unity. We have too many leaders of would-be left-wing forces who are unwilling to unite around a common, progressive platform. They are complicit in the rise of the far right.
The third axis is concrete policy proposals. We’re the only real force in France that can serve as a bulwark against the far right — and not just through posturing, but in terms of real work at the European Parliament. In her first term in office, Aubry worked on five reports and thousands of amendments. Compare that to Jordan Bardella, who leads the far-right Rassemblement National list. In five years, he has produced zero reports and twenty or so amendments.
Harrison Stetler
In the weeks following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, several parties suspended their participation in the left-wing NUPES alliance. Has this crisis irrevocably divided the Left in France?
Rima Hassan
We should recognize that in France, the question of Palestine had been brushed under the rug for years. Our political references and the way we thought about this issue were drastically behind the times — that goes for many French people, but most of all for the political class. In many respects, I think French society is ahead of politicians on this subject. You can see it at the demonstrations, and in civil society. So there’s either a lack of courage or a lack of clear-sightedness on the part of certain left-wing leaders, who haven’t seen this as a major issue. Much of our political class, even on the Left, is very indulgent about what Israel does.
Left-wing unity can’t come at the cost of betraying our values. We’re not talking about a dozen or so dead people in Gaza, but over thirty-two thousand dead civilians. This is unacceptable. The problem is complacency with regards to a narrative that maintains the Israeli state’s impunity.
Much of our political class, even on the Left, is very indulgent about what Israel does.
For example, Raphaël Glucksmann [the head candidate on the Socialist Party’s ticket] refuses to even address the question of genocide, even though we’re not asking him to recognize Israel’s actions as such. We’re asking him to draw the political conclusions from the fact that Israel is the target of cases before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court for this crime. If you’re a politician, your responsibility isn’t to wait for genocide to be committed before naming it. The whole point of the Genocide Convention is that it’s a convention for the prevention of genocide. It’s not to decide whether there’s genocide or not, it’s to prevent and preempt acts of genocide.
Harrison Stetler
In recent years, Glucksmann has sought to establish himself as a leading voice for international law and human rights, whether in his defense of Uyghurs in China or in his support of Ukraine. Does he have a double standard on Palestine?
Rima Hassan
Absolutely, and for me that’s where the Left’s failure lies. In France, there is a consensus on supporting Ukraine. Every party agrees that we must stand by the Ukrainian people, and the debate is about how much help to give. The contrast could not be starker with the treatment of the Palestinian people, who have no state, no sovereignty, and are now seeing their last remaining territories disappear because of colonization. Nobody is helping them. Europe has even cut aid to the UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency], the organization that is supposed to distribute food.
The way many Europeans react to what’s happening in Palestine and to the Palestinians amounts to saying that their lives aren’t worth as much as Europeans’ are.
Glucksmann was elected [to the EU Parliament] on the issue of human rights, but he’s an imposter. His approach is deeply ideological. What I want to be is a defender of human rights that takes the letter of international law seriously. Glucksmann’s compass is his political battles, around which he then builds a human rights framing. His political fight is against China, not for the Uyghurs. His political fight is directed against Russia, not for Ukrainians. And since the state of Israel can never be a political target for him, defending the Palestinian people will never matter to him. That’s what separates us.
Harrison Stetler
Before you announced your candidacy, you were the target of insults, smears, and a campaign of harassment. What was your experience of these attacks?
Rima Hassan
I experienced it as a continuum of colonial violence. The way many Europeans react to what’s happening in Palestine and to the Palestinians amounts to saying that their lives aren’t worth as much as Europeans’ are. I’m attacked for what I am, less for what I say. I’m attacked, targeted, and threatened because of my origins. I don’t publicize the telephone number of a political opponent. I don’t send emails to their employers saying you’ve got to fire them. I’ve gotten the opposite treatment — and I think it’s fundamentally linked to the fact that Palestinians have always been perceived as colonial subjects.
As a result, there is very little media coverage of me that seeks to humanize where I come from or what I say when I describe a people’s suffering. Making space for the Palestinian narrative means making space for the rights of the Palestinian people. And the West is lagging far behind in demanding those rights. Today the Palestinian question is predominantly viewed through a humanitarian prism. There are very few voices setting out the terms of a political perspective, which will involve condemning Israel. Only France Insoumise has a clear position on this.
Harrison Stetler
This last week at last saw a resolution from the United Nations Security Council calling for an immediate cease-fire. Are we at a turning point in this crisis?
Rima Hassan
I’m still at a loss about everything that’s happened these last few months. I’ve felt like a hamster in a wheel, trying to escape from something while being constantly solicited and hyperactive. But there has been a release of pressure [with the UN resolution] — this is what I’ve been fighting for since October. I’ve been writing letters to elected officials and set up the Action Palestine network to make the case for demanding a cease-fire. I feel like I’m in a parallel reality. I don’t understand how it can be so difficult for nations to demand that the guns be put down.
Eighty-five percent of Gaza has been razed to the ground. That’s schools, hospitals, places of worship, monuments — everything that makes up the life of a society. It’s the places where people live, heal, and educate themselves. This call for a cease-fire comes after over thirty thousand have been killed, with over seventy thousand wounded, after thousands and thousands of amputees, with 1.7 million people living in tents and still under the threat of being bombed. I don’t know if we can call it a victory.
It’s not just Palestinians who are dying, but also the values that the West claims to uphold.
The West has failed to understand that what is dying in Gaza is its own self-image. It’s not just Palestinians who are dying, but also the values that we claim to uphold. So [this resolution] is a bitter victory, but it’s a first step. At least it sets out the terms for constraining Israel. If Israel launches an offensive on Rafah, which Benjamin Netanyahu has said he intends to do, we’ll theoretically have justification to prosecute Israel.
Harrison Stetler
What leverage does Europe have to bring Netanyahu to heel? It seems like the only outside power that he cares about is the United States.
Rima Hassan
Far from it! Europe has enormous leverage over Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is as much a European issue as a Middle Eastern one. The persecution of Jewish people primarily stems from European history. The idea of a Jewish national home was conceived as a response to this antisemitism, even if there was also antisemitism in the Arab world. The link between the state’s creation and the support given to Israel today in name of this memory is inextricably European.
This is why Israel has a privileged status in Europe. Israel has association agreements with the EU, which is Israel’s leading trading partner, with some 30 percent of its trade passing through Europe.
The main levers we have today could be an embargo on Israel and ending the EU-Israel agreements, which are conditioned on the respect for human rights that are not being adhered to today. Actually recognizing the Palestinian state would be a way of politically confronting Israel, as we did in South Africa. We need to withdraw from commercial and diplomatic collaboration and isolate this state until it comes to its senses. We need to make it very clear: you will only have an ally in us if you are a totally democratic state, when you respect human rights, and when you commit to Palestinians having a state.
Harrison Stetler
Your position on the prospect of a binational state has garnered a lot of controversy, both from fellow activists and from those who defend Israel. Why do we need to move beyond the Oslo Accords framework?
Rima Hassan
I didn’t wake up one morning and say: “I don’t want a [separate] Palestinian state.” When I renounced this, as an activist, it wasn’t an ideological position. And what people don’t understand is that it’s a renunciation, not a demand: precisely because there’s a policy of colonization and eight hundred thousand settlers, but nobody’s talking about decolonizing the Palestinian territories. We hear talk about sanctions against a few extremist settlers, and even that’s very recent. But colonization has been going on for decades. And nobody has very clearly condemned Israel and moved to force the decolonization of the Palestinian territories.
We need to withdraw from commercial and diplomatic collaboration and isolate Israeli until it comes to its senses.
As an activist, I make this observation and affirm that it’s our responsibility to think of an alternative. If the road toward a two-state solution doesn’t work, then what’s the alternative? It’s full cohabitation, with recognition of each other’s language and identity. That may take different forms. It could be a binational state, recognizing that there’s an Israeli-Jewish people with its own language, and official recognition of a Palestinian people with its own language. Or it could be a confederation of states like Switzerland, where we have territories that are more Arab or Palestinian than Israeli, and vice versa, but without separation.
Harrison Stetler
What brought you to supporting a two-state solution since announcing your candidacy?
Rima Hassan
When we approach this question from a political position, we have levers and frames of reference that aren’t the same as when we’re working in civil society. As a politician, you have to refer to the framework of the UN resolutions, which EU member states are beholden to, and to what’s actually in international law: the resolutions prescribing a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state, based on the Oslo Accords and the 1967 borders. As a political figure, this is the lever I’m going to try to keep working on, but with a warning: if it doesn’t work, we all have to prepare a plan B.
Harrison Stetler
Why does the Left in Europe find it so hard to have a frank debate about this?
Rima Hassan
People see it as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel. I don’t know what planet these people have been living on for the past thirty years. I’m not the one who should be criticized for thinking of a plan B as an alternative when you haven’t worked to save plan A.
It also bears remembering that if the two-state solution fails — which is precisely what the Israeli regime wants — the Palestinians aren’t going to disappear. It makes me laugh a little, this wind of panic [in response to the idea of a binational state], when, paradoxically, there’s been no urgency whatsoever over the destruction of the two-state solution. For thirty years, these people have not so much as raised a finger about colonization, which is what has buried the prospect of two states. These people aren’t demonstrating, aren’t angry about everything that’s destroyed the two-state solution. They’re only angry at the people who are asking the serious questions about what comes next.
Harrison Stetler
Your work in civil society has had you dealing closely with refugee rights and migration. Where is migration policy headed in Europe today?
Rima Hassan
In Europe, we’re not experiencing a migration crisis, but a crisis in welcoming migrants. In other words, the way we present refugees and migration as a problem is basically a reflection of our inability to deal with a social issue like the rest of the world does. Migration is a constant: throughout human history, people have always migrated. The modern nation-state has hardened borders and questions of sovereignty over territories, with very tight controls on who can travel, who can’t, and who can and can’t leave.
Eighty-five percent of people who are forced to migrate do so within and between countries in the so-called Global South. So most who leave their home territory or country are absorbed elsewhere in the South. It’s also worth noting that four million Ukrainians have entered the EU and we were able to show solidarity in their case, creating proper mechanisms for receiving them here, opening up rights such as education, health, and employment.
Harrison Stetler
But for now, the idea of “Fortress Europe” seems to be winning what you called the “battle of narratives.” In the last year, we’ve seen a deepening of European partnerships with states in North Africa to tighten controls on migration. What does this externalization mean?
Rima Hassan
It means that we’re prepared to abandon commitments based on human rights and international law. It’s the end result of the logic whereby for political reasons, and in the name of a specific political ideology, we’ve come to ignore major texts that are pillars of the EU and the UN’s construction. And the question I ask is, if we’re prepared today to sacrifice such-and-such a convention, such-and-such a text or international commitment, what’s next? And what credibility do we really have at an international level to talk about human rights? What credibility do we have to tell such-and-such a country in the Middle East, or China, or Russia, that your regimes are violating fundamental rights?
Harrison Stetler
There’s surely little more symptomatic of this trend than the fact that Fabrice Leggeri, former director of Europe’s Frontex border agency, is a candidate on the Rassemblement National ticket in June’s EU elections…
Rima Hassan
The tentacles of far-right ideology have penetrated the heights of the main political and media institutions. We’re no longer confronted with an isolated party, as in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s day. But we can’t just bash the people who vote for them. Our role is to propose solutions, to speak clearly to the distress and misery that leads people to lean toward an ideology like this — and away from a coherent program for confronting today’s problems.
Harrison Stetler
You and Leggeri are essentially opposites: What would you most like to bring to parliament from your experience in civil society working on this topic, or as someone born a refugee who moved to Europe?
Rima Hassan
In general, I think we need more activists in politics, which tends to be very closed off as a sphere in society. France Insoumise has a great ability to bring people from civil society into politics and say, “This is a voice that we have to listen to.” I know that for many people in France I represent a way of saying that, you can be a refugee, arrive in France at the age of ten and still be legitimate in politics and as a voice in French society.
Ultimately, the refugee issue raises the question of what kind of society we want to live in. When we consider our inability to resolve the migration issue today, we have to realize that in 2050, 250 million people will be forced to move because of climate catastrophes. So, if we’re not ready today, what’s it going to be like in twenty-five years’ time, when we’ll have double or even triple the migratory flows to manage?