Que bonito: Israel a aprender com os vizinhos

Os escandinavos estao sempre a meter-se nestes assados. Será a auto-censura, no resto desta Europa tao bem comportadinha? Ou serao os israelitas anti-louro-platinado?

Adenda a 28.08.09: E depois do governo israelita confundir o jornalismo feito num país com o governo político desse país (como os seus vizinhos retrógados fazem), o jornalismo de Israel mostra que a esperanca de Israel está longe do seu governo político, mas perto do seu jornalismo (ou que, pelo menos, há liberdade de imprensa e gente com juízo):

Swedish article on organ harvesting was cheap and harmful journalism

Excerto: "Serious journalism's task is to document, investigate and prove - not to call on others to investigate, as the Swedish tabloid did. One may, for example, accuse the Swedish reporter of a crime, writing that he rapes little boys or girls, all based on suspicions and rumors, and call on the Swedish police to investigate. That's what the reporter did with his claims of trafficking in Palestinian organs."

Israel e Palestina

Um cão ladra e o homem caminha até ao cão preso a uma árvore e dá-lhe um pontapé. O cão gane e o homem pontapeia, o cão guincha e o homem pontapeia, o cão morde e o homem pontapeia, o cão morde e o homem pontapeia e o cão morde e o homem pontapeia e o cão morde e o homem pontapeia e o cão... Quem vê diz: "Maldito cão que nunca mais se deita a morrer."

Assombraçao

No Verao dos meus doze ou treze anos, o acaso dos meus olhos nos livros acomodados na estante escolheram duas obras que me lançaram numa quebra entre o antes e o depois. Uma era um conjunto de pesados tomos que me custaram a desalojar da prateleira mais alta sobre a segunda guerra mundial e que certamente me puseram em risco de queda e fracturas. A segunda era também um conjunto de vários volumes, mas mais leves, de "O Judeu" de Camilo Castelo Branco. Esta foi a partida para a descoberta da maldade humana e a descoberta da maldade humana na religiao que os meus pais me deram de herança. Nessa altura, a religiao era uma parte fundamental de mim. Além disso, era muito jovem e o que li foi chocante ao ponto de traumatizante. Nesse Verao, deu-se o início do meu abandono do catolicismo, porque acabei por sentir impossível a pertença a uma organizaçao com tal marca. Porque os padres que questionei deram-me respostas mesquinhas, porque enfim, nao havia qualquer razao para me sujar. Era repulsa o que sentia e olhando para trás nao sei quanto sangrou a minha ingenuidade. Os meus pais tomaram este resultado como o primeiro sinal da adolescencia. Rebeldia sem causa, devem ter pensado.

A minha ideia de Deus confundiu-se. Surgiu-me a questao que provavelmente chega a todos: como é que Deus deixa acontecer barbaridades? Mas largar Deus era um mergulho na escuridao e deixei-me viver na angústia. Mais tarde comecei a ler a Biblia e a descoberta nua e crua do Antigo Testamento irremediavelmente me lançou também fora da esfera daquele Deus. Era um Deus criado á imagem do Homem. Tudo começou nesse Verao, em que descobri que um povo que julgava da Biblia, que já nao existia, nao por violencia, mas por mudanças nominativas, assim como os fariseus e os canaenses, que esse povo ainda existia e que catástrofes inomináveis tinham submergido esse povo e com eles a minha ideia de e da humanidade e a minha religiao.

Assim, quando na blogosfera perguntam porque nos preocupamos tanto com Israel e os israelitas e nao tanto com os sudaneses ou os arménios, penso que nem tudo é explicado por anti-semitismo. O povo judeu está marcado na consciencia dos europeus a fogo e morte. O judaísmo é o pai do cristianismo. A Europa é a mae de Israel. O estranho seria que os judeus e Israel nao fossem uma presença marcada na consciencia dos europeus.

John Oliver sobre Israel

John Oliver do Daily Show resolve reportar sobre Israel e é hilariante.

"video aqui"

Estratégias

Artigo de Seymour M. Hersh, no The New Yorker, descrevendo: Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.

Excerto:
Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals—to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

O artigo é exasperante, mas admira alguém que Israel tenha perdido completamente a sanidade e os americanos vejam o caso com a satisfaçao de poderem ter uma demo de graça?

O caso do boicote*

Para fazer um reenquadramento da realidade [nao, os cientistas nao sao uma massa homogénea de anti-semitas ou pró-palestinianos, consoante quem le estas linhas], posto neste blogue uma notícia na Science, que saiu um ano* antes desta carta dirigida ao sindicato de professores universitários na Gra-Bretanha (AUT no texto) por um cientista israelita (carta que o Joao Miranda do Blasfemias postou ontem).

Science 3 June 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5727, p. 1397
DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5727.1397b

News of the Week
ACADEMIC POLITICS:
Boycott of Israeli Universities Overturned
Mason Inman

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.--Buffeted by international criticism, the U.K. Association of University Teachers (AUT) has revoked a decision to boycott two Israeli universities. The boycott was approved at AUT's annual meeting in April and called on members to shun Bar Ilan University in Ramat-Gan because of its ties with a school in a contested settlement, and the University of Haifa for alleged harassment of a lecturer who oversaw a study critical of the Israeli military (Science, 29 April, p. 613). Haifa University denied the allegation and threatened to sue AUT for defamation.

Scholarly institutions quickly issued statements denouncing AUT on grounds that such boycotts violate academic freedom and are counterproductive. Among those who asked AUT to reconsider were the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, AAAS (which publishes Science), and the U.K.'s Royal Society.

AUT members also protested. A group of 25 petitioned for a special meeting to reconsider the boycott, which they claimed had not been fully debated. Roughly 250 attended a meeting on 27 May at which two-thirds voted to overturn the resolution. They also asked AUT to review its international policies, including a call to the European Union to withhold funding from Israeli organizations "until Israel opens meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians."

"We are relieved that this counterproductive [boycott] policy has been overwhelmingly rejected," says sociologist David Hirsh of Goldsmiths College in London, co-founder of Emerge, a campaign set up to oppose the boycott.

Some who urged sanctions on Israel say the vote hasn't changed their plans, however: "The boycott remains," says one of the leaders, neurobiologist Steven Rose of the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K., who will continue to honor it. But AUT is taking a different tack. The group's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said in a statement, "It is now time ... to commit to supporting trade unionists in Israel and Palestine working for peace."

Eu na caixa de comentários do Blasfémias escrevi que a comparaçao com o Lysenkoism é parva. Para explicar a minha caracterizaçao basta limitar-me ao aspecto diferencial mais fundamental: o lisenkoism aconteceu na Uniao Sovietica, um estado opressor que liquidava a liberdade de expressao, de movimentos, de existencia. Este caso é transnacional, acontecendo na Gra-Bretanha em que nem de perto, nem de longe tal situacao existe, e acontece no seio do mundo académico em que, também, nem de longe, nem de perto tal situaçao de repressao existe. Sendo necessário provas (deixem-me rir um bocadinho), este artigo e outros que também poderia postar, que foram sendo publicados na Science e na Nature, mostram-no claramente. Quando se fazem comparaçoes há que ter o sentido das proporçoes, caso contrário, pode-se ser caracterizado como parvo e eu até estou a ser boazinha.

Hope?

Dear Friends,

As the awful civilian death toll rises above 1000 in Lebanon and Israel, people around the world are seeking a place to voice their frustration and concern. Over the last 4 days, 200,000 people from 148 countries have signed the ceasefire petition. At this rate, we could soon be the largest global online petition in history.

The pressure is working. The global outcry over this crisis has pushed the Ambassadors to the UN Security Council to work around the clock to achieve an immediate ceasefire.

The latest word is that the Council may be close to a final vote today or tomorrow, but we've been this close before and negotiations have fallen apart. We need more pressure now to close the deal.

Please forward this email on, spread the word to your friends, family and colleagues, post a link on your blog, bring up the campaign in discussions, and urgently encourage people around you to join this global wave of protest by signing up at the link below:

http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/mo/en.html

The pressure is working. Let's ratchet it up.

With hope,

Ricken Patel, Ceasefire Campaign



Copyright : © Christopher Anderson / Magnum Photos

Aitaroun. Líbano. Agosto 2006. Quando os jornalistas chegaram à vila, idosos emergiram dos seus esconderijos entre os escombros.

Preparem-se: Mr. sem papas na língua

Esta ligação leva-vos a um vídeo com George Galloway em Maio de 2005. Se quiserem continuar para Agosto de 2006, carreguem em "previous": terão George Galloway a ser entrevistado na Sky News sobre o actual conflito no Médio Oriente. A sério, preparem-se. Se forem extremistas para o lado pró-Israel ou pró-América, cuidado, perigo de síncope.

Abutres sem vergonha!

A última vez que li sobre os números da desgraça tinham morrido 1078 pessoas no actual conflito no Médio Oriente. Cada uma destas pessoas não morreu de mansinho. Penso que qualquer pessoa com dois dedos de testa não precisa de uma fotografia para se dar conta que num bombardeamento as pessoas morrem violentamente. São 1078 histórias de morte violenta. Mais os que ainda não foram desenterrados, mais os feridos, mais os deslocados, mais os que todos os dias mal vivem, escondidos e calcorrinhando a medo as ruas.

Enquanto isso, longe da guerra, pessoas que não veêm limites para sectarismos utilizam postes para provar que há papparazis da morte. Qual a relevância de analisar as fotografias para definir que andaram a posicionar-se a preceito para a foto? Ainda que alguém tenha estômago para seguir as racionalizações, se conseguirmos ultrapassar o mesquinho do resultado face ao método, chega-se aonde? Nada. Continuam a ser 1078 mortes violentas. Continuam a haver feridos. Deslocados. Guerra.

Chega-se é a abutres sem vergonha, sendo que um nacional identificado é o jcd.

Human Rights Watch sobre já sabem quem

" The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare. "
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch

Cá está. O expectável atendendo as notícias de morte e destruição que chegavam do Líbano.

Relatório da Human Rights Watch “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon"

Quanto ao Hezbollah a organização reportou a 18 de Julho: Hezbollah Rocket Attacks on Haifa Designed to Kill Civilians.

Nada que não expectássemos também.

O anti-semitismo nos media

Ontem andei nesta página e, entre vários, li os três artigos a que faço ligação, onde se realiza uma análise dos dois pesos e duas medidas usadas pelos media dos EUA e da Grã-Bretanha para noticiarem os conflitos em que Israel está envolvida.

Blaming the Victim, Gaza, de David Edwards, 10 de Julho de 2006

Demolishing Lebanon, de David Edwards, 30 de Julho de 2006

Five myths that help Israel’s war crimes, de Jonathan Cook, 25 de Julho de 2006.

Depois de passar uma boa parte da madrugada a ler diversos artigos com este tipo de análise, fui até à janela fumar um cigarro e pensei que realmente deve haver anti-semitismo no tratamento do conflito no Médio Oriente. Só que este anti-semitismo é contra os árabes.

No arrastão outro exemplo de distorção dos média, mas agora nacional. O sr. José Manuel Fernandes está atido a que ninguém sabe ou quer ir ver debaixo da sua parvalheira. Segundo o autor do arrastão, o JMF escreve no Público (eu já desisti da minha assinatura) que um dos soldados da ONU escreveu um méil a um superior onde diz que o Hezbollah estaria a usar o posto como escudo humano. Ora, eu li a página que é dada no arrastão, em que se encontra transcrita a totalidade do méil enviado pelo soldado canadiano. Se é mesmo este o méil (e não há nada no texto, na forma como é escrito e nos pormenores que faça pensar que não) então tal como o Daniel Oliveira diz, não há qualquer identificação de que o posto da ONU estivesse a ser utilizado como escudo humano. A possibilidade de erro de leitura é impossível. A não ser que se sofra de iliteracia em inglês ou simplesmente se queira mesmo ler algo mesmo assim, assim, como se quer. Estão a ver o processo do José Manuel Fernandes editar informação? Mantenham este pensamento.

A Cruz Vermelha no Líbano

[...] The ICRC [Cruz Vermelha Internacional] teams may be the only saviours on the highways of southern Lebanon - their reticence in criticising anyone, including the Israelis and Hizbollah is a silence worthy of angels - although their work can attack their emotions as surely as an air strike. Only a day earlier, they had driven to the village of Aiteroun scarcely a mile from the Israeli army's disastrous assault on Bint Jbeil. In each "abandoned" village on the way, a woman would appear, then a child and then more women and the elderly, all desperate to leave.

There were perhaps 3,000 of them and, last night, Sylvie Thoral was trying to arrange permission for an evacuation convoy. The Israelis are promising the Lebanese much worse than the punishment they have already received - well over 400 Lebanese civilians dead - for Hizbollah's killing of three Israeli soldiers and the capture of two others. But still the Israelis have suggested no "green light" for Aiteroun.

"They were begging us to take them with us and we had no ability to do that," Saidi says with deep emotion. "Their eyes were filled with tears."

[...]

An old man approached us carrying a silver tray of glasses and a pot of scalding tea. Generous to the end, under constant air attack, these fearful Lebanese were offering us their traditional hospitality even now, as the jets wheeled in the sky above us. They asked us in to the house they had refused to leave and I realised then that these kind Lebanese people - unarmed, unconnected to Hizbollah - were the real resistance here. The men and women who will ultimately save Lebanon.

But before we abandoned our journey and before Sylvie and her team and I set off back to their base in the far and dangerous south of Lebanon, a man carrying a bag of vegetables walked up to Beshara Hanna. "Please move your cars away from my home," he said. "You make it dangerous for us all."

And the shame of this shook me at once. The Israeli attack on the Qana ambulances - their missiles plunging through the red crosses on the roofs - had contaminated even our own vehicles. He was just one man. But for him, the Israelis had turned the Red Cross - the symbol of hope on our roofs and the sides of our vehicles - into a symbol of danger and fear. [...]


Robert Fisk

Insanidade ou extremo pragmatismo?

Uma amiga enviou-me um méil: Eu nunca ouvi falar de um exército que bombardeasse as Nações Unidas e a Cruz Vermelha na mesma semana. Esta guerra é um pesadelo. Eu abro a ligação e vou-me perguntando o que é que está a possuir o exército israelita. A conclusão que eu tiro é que a estratégia é arrasar o Sul do Libano e eliminar tudo, mas mesmo tudo o que mexa. Literalmente transformá-lo num deserto. Tenho de concordar com a visão dos militares israelitas, de que para ter alguma possibilidade rápida de eliminar o Hezbollah e, ao mesmo tempo, formar a zona tampão entre Israel e o Libano, esta é a estratégia armada a seguir. Mas pesando o que isto significa para a população civil, para o Libano (e isto seria previsivel antes da ofensiva), as probabilidades da acção entrar em espiral sem que o Hezbollah feneça (já que está enraizado fora do Libano) eu concluiria que a solução armada não é solução. Mas quem sou eu?

MNE: a validade da prudência ou a inutilidade de tomar partidos ou...

Exactamente o que eu penso. Não sei porquê, há assuntos sobre os quais quero escrever aqui no blogue, mas em que fico completamente bloqueada. Neste caso, em particular, estava mesmo à espera de alguém pegar no assunto. Obrigado.

P.S.: mas já agora: é através do MNE que algo, por pouco que seja, pode ser feito relativamente ao que se passa no Médio Oriente, por Portugal. O que eu quero ver do MNE de Portugal é pragmatismo. Tomar partido seria um fait divers de cá, limitando uma possivel acção lá.

Desastre ambiental no Líbano

Up to 35,000 tons of oil have spilled into the Mediterranean following Israeli air strikes -- now it is a race against time to prevent long-term damage and the destruction of a fragile ecosystem.
(...)
According to UNEP chief Steiner, "The Lebanese government has requested international assistance from the UN, and we stand ready to do all we can." He added that he is urgently trying to assemble EU satellite images and other data in order to get a more accurate measure of the spill along Lebanon's coast. "Firstly our thoughts are with the suffering of the civilian population," he said. "But we must be concerned about the short and long-term impacts on the marine environment, including the biodiversity upon which so many people depend for their livelihoods and living."

The ocean is a vital source of income for many Lebanese, through fishing and tourism. Many fish and crabs have already perished and others are covered in oil. The Lebanese beaches that were once so popular with tourists could be polluted for some time to come. Even when the bombing stops, it is unlikely tourists will be rushing back to the country, but if they did, instead of sandy beaches they would find long stretches of oily ground, strewn with dead and dying marine life.

Como é que é, Israel tem que defender a sua existência? Eu começo a perguntar-me se o Líbano sobreviverá esta guerra. Na verdade e tendo em conta ainda antes desta guerra, será que o estado do Líbano sobreviverá o estado de Israel?

In Lebanon. During the war.

Monday 24 July

[...] In the middle of a field of tomatoes, I see a London bus. I turn to the driver. "Isn't that a London bus?" I ask, like the man who sees the sheep in a tree in Monty Python. "Yes, that's a London bus." It is. It's a bloody great bright red Routemaster double decker. In the Beka'a Valley. In Lebanon. During the war.

Seventeen miles south and the road is blown up, craters in the middle and narrow tracks on the edge for our vehicles to pass. One Israeli bomb has blown away most of the road above a 60ft chasm and it reminds me of that scene in North West Frontier where Kenneth More has to manoeuvre a steam locomotive over a blown-up railway bridge, on which the tracks are still connected but there's nothing underneath. More turns to Lauren Bacall and says: "Of course, it's one of my hobbies, driving trains over broken railway bridges." [...]

Wednesday 26 July

Indian UN soldiers bring what is left of the four observers to the run-down hospital in Marjayoun. All day they had been reporting Israeli shellfire creeping closer to their clearly marked position. An officer in the UN's headquarters at Naqoura phoned the Israelis 10 times to warn them of their fall of shot, and 10 times he had been promised that no more shells would fall close to the Khiam post.

But the four soldiers did not run away - as the Israelis presumably hoped they would - and so yesterday evening an Israeli aircraft flew down and fired a missile directly into their UN position, tearing the four brave men to pieces and flattening their building. I notice that they are brought to the hospital in unwieldy black plastic bags, apparently decapitated. One of the Indian soldiers is wearing a turban, painted the same pale blue as the UN flag. [...]

Friday 28 July

[...] My mobile phone rings. An American journalist is walking south of Tibnin towards the Hizbollah-Israeli battle at Bint Jbail - a wise precaution because all cars are now prey to Israel's eagles - and has found two wounded Druze men lying by the road. One of them cannot stand. She has no car. Can I help? I am 15 miles away. "Can I tell them they will be rescued?" Don't lie to them, I say. Tell them you will try to get help. I promise to call the Red Cross.

I phone Hisham Hassan at the ICRC in Beirut and tell him the precise location. Both men are lying by a smashed roadside stall with an orange flag in the ground, a kilometre past a road sign which says "Welcome to Beit Yahoun" and next to a huge bomb crater. Hisham promises to call the Tibnin Red Cross ambulance centre. Ten minutes later, I get a text message: " Red Cross on the way." Angels from heaven. [...]

Saturday 29 July

[...] Then go through my notes of the week for this diary. I find that my handwriting briefly collapsed after the air attack on Thursday. I was so frightened that I could hardly write. I sit on the balcony and read Siegfried Sassoon. Cody also reads to calm himself in war. But Cody reads Verlaine.


-----------------***------------------------

[...] Blair and his ignorant Foreign Secretary have played along with Israel's savagery with blind trust in our own loss of memory. It is perfectly acceptable, it seems, after the Hizbollah staged its reckless and lethal 12 July assault, to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon and the lives of more than 400 of its innocents. But hold on a moment. When the IRA used to cross the Irish border to kill British soldiers - which it did - did Blair and his cronies blame the Irish Republic's government in Dublin? Did Blair order the RAF to bomb Dublin power stations and factories? Did he send British troops crashing over the border in tanks to fire at will into the hill villages of Louth, Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal? Did Blair then demand an international, Nato-led force to take over a buffer zone - on the Irish, not the Northern Ireland side, of the border?

Of course not. But Israel has special privileges afforded to no other civilised nation. It can do exactly what Blair would never have done - and still receive the British Government's approbation. It can trash the Geneva Conventions - because the Americans have done that in Iraq - and it can commit war crimes and murder UN soldiers like the four unarmed observers who refused to leave their post under fire. [...]

---****------------

[...] Indeed, how come the people of southern Lebanon have not been consulted about the army which is supposed to live in their lands? Because, of course, it is not coming for them. It will come because the Israelis and the Americans want it there to help reshape the Middle East. This no doubt makes sense in Washington - where self-delusion rules diplomacy almost as much as it does in Israel - but America's dreams usually become the Middle East's nightmares.

And this time, we will watch a Nato-led army's disintegration at close quarters. South-west Afghan-istan and Iraq are now so dangerous that no reporters can witness the carnage being perpetrated as a result of our hopeless projects. But, in Lebanon, it's going to be live-time coverage of a disaster that can only be avoided by the one diplomatic step Messrs Bush and Blair refuse to take: by talking to Damascus.

So when this latest foreign army arrives, count the days - or hours - to the first attack upon it. [...]

Excertos de textos de Robert Fisk para o The Independent

Ai dos europeus se não forem {+}

Os israelitas afinal aprenderam a lição do Libano: destruir e sair, sair e deixar lá um tanso a tratar dos terroristas e a dar-lhes a tal zona tampão.

Os EUA já mandaram umas bocas, que não senhor, apoiam, mas não há disponibilidade.

A União Europeia está na mira. Ai deles se disserem que não. Provavelmente, primeiro vai ser pelo sentimento de orgulho como valor geopolítico militar mundial que se deve querer ser (senão é-se fracote, que isto tem de se ser sherife para se ser respeitado). Se a Europa titubear, virá o sentimento de culpa, depois, uma aposta, vai ser mesmo a chamarem o pessoal de anti-semita. {... esta última parte já é efeito da hiperventilação. É de estar pelos cabelos com este argumento.}

Respiremos. Há que pagar os erros do passado. Respiremos.

Adenda vinda do Canhoto: Pés na terra.

Esquecer a história - 3

Israel succeeded in destroying the military infrastructure of the PLO in Lebanon, but she unleashed an even more formidable threat on its northern border, the Shiite militias of the Hezbollah. In fact, the war brought Iran through its proxies, the Hezbollah militias, to Israel's doorstep. This dynamic was not dissimilar to that created by Israel in the Gaza Strip at about the same time. Her obsession with the PLO there would end up enthroning the Hamas and other fundamentalist groups as the hegemonic power in the Strip.

In the annals of policies that turned out to be marches of folly in modern history, Israel's Lebanese adventure will undoubtedly receive the standing it deserves. One of the absurdities of her presence in that torn land was that she invaded it in the first place to 'solve' the Palestinian question and destroy the PLO's infrastructure, yet long years after the invasion Israel continued to be mired down in the mud and to bleed when no connection existed any longer between her presence in Lebanon and the Palestinian question. In 1993 Israel reached an agreement with the PLO - the Oslo accords - but in Lebanon she remained bogged down in a struggle with the local Shiite militias determined 'to expel the foreign invader'. And if that were not enough, Lebanon held Israel in the clamps of Syrian blackmail: no way out in Lebanon was allowed without payment in Syrian currency, namely, withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

The war in Lebanon would last for eighteen years; it ended in June 2000 when the last Israeli soldier left Lebanese territory under the instructions of a government in which the present author had the privilege serving. Lebanon taught us that wars that cannot be ended are sometimes worse than those that are lost.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy", Oxford University Press, página 183, 2006.

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.

Esquecer a história - 1

Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 was prompted by a number of far-fetched and unrealistic strategic objectives. In the background was always Ben Gurion's [fundador de Israel] dream, fully shared by Begin [primeiro-ministro israelita em 1982], of an 'Alliance of Minorities' with the Maronites of Lebanon. But the major objective was that of eliminating the military and political challenge posed by the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization], which as a result of Israel's Litani operation in 1978 had fundamentally changed its deployment in Lebanon from a plethora of dispersed terrorist squads to a powerful standing army in control of much of the country. Destroying the PLO's infrastructure in Lebanon as well dismantling the last remaining Palestinian springboard in an Arab country for the military struggle against Israel, was the immediate operational objective of the war. But the architects of the invasion had far wider ambitions. They believed that the defeat of the Palestinians in Lebanon would trigger a mass exodus of Palestinians to the East Bank of the River Jordan, which in turn would bring about the collapse of the Hashemite dynasty [na Jordânia] and the Palestinisation of the kingdom in a way that would allow Israel a free hand to assert her rule in Judaea and Samaria [nomeação israelita para "West Bank" ou em português "Cisjordânia"]. Israel also believed that her victory in Lebanon would create a new political order in that country with an undisputed Christian hegemony. Lebanon would then be forced to make peace with Israel, and expel the Syrians in a way that would amount to a radical change in the entire strategic balance in the region.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy", Oxford University Press, páginas 178-179, 2006.