Esquecer a história - 2

But the war in Lebanon, which started in deceit and with grand strategic designs, ended in military disaster, political defeat and human disgrace. It developed into an all-out confrontation between almost all the ethnic and national forces in Lebanon, and its saddest episodes were the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps and Israel's siege of Beirut. Bashir Gumayel, the head of the Christian militias, a local version of an italian condottiere, refused to be Israel's puppet president of Lebanon; he would not make peace with her and break, in her favour, the delicate balance of his country between its Christian legacy and its Arab loyalties. He did not hesitate personally to make this clear to Prime Minister Begin. His assassination by Syrian agents was the prelude to the massacre of Sabra and Chatila that was perpetrated by Israel's allies in the Christian militias with the IDF's [Israeli Defense Forces] connivance.

The United States added her own contribution to the series of political setbacks suffered by Israel in Lebanon when, through the Reagan Peace Plan, she signaled to Israel that, although she precluded the creation of a Palestinian state, she did not share Israel's political designs and would not allow the war in Lebanon to be the prelude to the annexation of the West Bank. The plan referred to the settlements as a serious obstacle to peace, rejected the annexation of Jerusalem by Israel and advanced a scheme for a Palestinian autonomy linked to Jordan. The Reagan plan was a timely reminder to Israel that her Lebanese adventure did not bury the Palestinian dilemma as she had hoped; it only focused even more international attention on the Palestinian tragedy through the Sabra and Chatila massacre, and enhanced its international prominence, as well as the urgency of finding a homeland for a displaced people.

Ariel Sharon's [na altura, ministro da defesa] brutality and bellicose lack of realism in Lebanon culminated in a political farce in the form of a peace agreement that Bashir's brother and sucessor, Amin Gumayel, was forced to sign with Israel. [...] On what grounds did he [George Schultz, mediador norte-americano] assume that a weak and fragmented Lebanon led by a hardly legitimate president could resist a peace deal with Israel that emanated from a war of occupation and was practically imposed on Lebanon against the will of the most important ethnic groups in the country, with the active opposition of the Big Brother in Damascus, who still managed to safeguard his position as the major broker of Lebanese politics?

Shlomo Ben-Ami, "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy", Oxford University Press, páginas 181-182, 2006.