Antecedentes e esquecimentos

CAA lembra o terrorismo a propósito do texto de Vital Moreira "Israel & Palestina":

"Que em toda esta sua análise se esquece de demasiadas coisas importantes.
Que a ocupação israelita da faixa de Gaza e da Cisjordânia não é a real causa do conflito já que as ameaças árabes de destruir Israel existiram desde o primeiro dia da sua proclamação como Estado pela ONU."

Eu vou lembrar aqui:

1. Parece-me natural que os Estados Árabes na altura (incluidno os ressentimentos de hoje) tenham reagido mal. A formação de um Estado nunca é pacifica, nem hoje, nem ontem, nem em lugar algum. Um Estado só se forma pela força, quer contra os terceiros vizinhos quer contra quem internamente a quem o recusar ou pôr em causa. E nunca o iria ser a declaração de um "Estado Judaico" por uma população essencialmente imigrante (ou descendente de), no meio de população árabe, que em grande número teve de fugir sem direito de retorno e onde existiam e existem ainda correntes sionistas fundamentalistas por uma Grande Israel. Imaginem os muçulmanos franceses a declarar um Estado Islãmico em Paris...

2. Existiram ataques (terroristas) israelitas sobre população árabe e o exército inglês nessa altura e até incluiu a morte do representante da ONU (outros eventos também lamentáveis ocorreram depois, existiram boas razões ou foram erros que são sempre inevitáveis em situações complexas? Talvez, mas deram-se e contribuíram para um impasse eterno).

3. Recorrer-se da ONU para justificar uma qualquer legalidade mas recusar a ONU para quase tudo o resto que não dê jeito...Por mim, a ONU representa apenas uma opinião, uma declaração de consenso colectivo (e ainda por cima dos Estados, não dos cidadãos em si), não uma declaração universal e absoluta de direito. Quer nesta questão, como em todas as outras.

4. Ao fazer a contabilidade da violência é preciso ter em conta também o número de vítimas palestinianas (que é muito superior), dos métodos (destruir as casas das famílias, etc.), a forma como vivem, e como estão sob ocupação de facto.

5. O Muro é um iniciativa do Estado de Israel (está no seu direito), tirando as questões do seu traçado e das complicadas questões de legitimidade territorial discutidas ao m2, pode ser útil para ambos os lados no médio e longo prazo. O TPI, a ONU ou mesmo os EUA podem tomar as posições de princípio que bem entenderem, mas ninguém pode impedir a vontade declarada de um Estado estabelecer as medidas de segurança que bem entenda (não o fazem em relação a acções que provocam mortes e são de duvidosa legalidade internacional, como o iriam fazer numa medida passiva?).

6. A violência alimenta-se da violência, e da destabilização da psicologia individual e colectiva. O Muro pode diminuir ambos. Israel tem especial obrigação de propor uma solução. A iniciativa de formação do seu Estado foi sua.

7. Também ajudava que no resto do médio-oriente e mundo árabe não se ajudasse a que mais violência e caos alimente mais violência e mais caos. A queda forçada de regimes e ocupação militar, quer no Afeganistão, Iraque e potencialmente a Arábia Saudita, o Irão e a Síria, pode tornar aquela região num rastilho de tragédias sem fim. É o que os extremistas mais desejam, por isso combatem já o regime monárquico Saudita.

Sobre os antecedentes do conflito ler

Background of the Middle East Conflict, by Wendy McElroy, October 2003, na Future of Freedom Foundation

Fica aqui a parte final do texto:

Post–World War II Israel

In early 1945, as World War II drew to a close, King Saud of Saudi Arabia met with Roosevelt. The king expressed his concern about the number of European Jews emigrating to Palestine; he suggested, instead, that displaced Jews be given part of Germany. Roosevelt assured King Saud that Arab interests would not be jeopardized. But within a few months, on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. His successor, Harry S. Truman, took a pro-Zionist position and recommended that 100,000 Jewish refugees be settled in Palestine.

One hundred thousand was not an arbitrary figure. After World War II, some 100,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution were in camps for displaced persons. They were the remnants of a rich culture that had numbered in the millions only years before. Zionists demanded they be admitted to Palestine immediately. To control the flood, the British introduced the “Defense Regulations.” Habeas corpus was suspended; people could be detained without trial; entire villages were moved at the whim of military authorities; curfews and security zones were established; people could be deported without explanation.

The Zionists started a program of terrorism against the British. Menachem Begin — later prime minister of Israel — was the leader of the Irgun Zvai Leumi or National Military Organization and the mastermind behind the most infamous act of Jewish terrorism: the bombing of the British headquarters at the King David Hotel in 1946. An estimated 95 people died from the blast.

The official American response was muted. Truman was far more concerned with the spread of communism in Europe than with Middle Eastern affairs. The United Nations had been established in 1945 at a conference in San Francisco. Fifty governments signed the UN Charter and pledged to refrain from armed force, except in the common interest. A General Assembly was authorized to investigate any issues endangering international peace; a Security Council was empowered to meet any threat of war. Battle-weary, Britain turned the matter of Palestine over to the UN.

In May 1947, the UN General Assembly appointed a Special Commission on Palestine. The commission declared that partition was the only practical solution. The Arab delegates vigorously denied that the UN had the legal or moral right to divide their land. They refused to discuss partition.

Against the advice of the American State Department, Truman supported the establishment of a Jewish state. The State Department worried that a pro-Zionist stand would drive the Arabs toward the Soviets. But Zionists exerted intense pressure on the White House, Truman later wrote,

I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the area known as Palestine into two nations: one Jewish (Israel), one Arab (Palestine). The UN vote was 33 for, 13 against, 10 abstaining. The Arabs were to receive 43 percent of the land, the Jews 57 percent. The new states would come into being by October 1, 1948.

America favored the partition. During a meeting with American ambassadors to the Middle East, Truman stated bluntly,

I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.

Arabs immediately pointed out flaws in the partition, claiming, for example, that Jews received the best land. Zionists accepted partition reluctantly, calling it “an indispensable minimum.” The British, already frustrated with administering the region for years, agreed to enforce an uneasy peace until a self-announced deadline for departure on May 15, 1948.

The Jewish claim was outlined in a 1948 document entitled “Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel,” which reads, in part,

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped.... After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration of their political freedom.

The Arab claim was outlined in 1938, by George Antonius, a Christian Palestinian Arab:

The Arab rights to Palestine are derived from actual and long-standing possession, and rest upon the strongest human foundations. Their connexion with Palestine goes back uninterruptedly to the earliest historical times.... Any solution based on the forcible expulsion of the peasantry from the countryside in which they have their homesteads and their trees, their shrines and graveyards, and all the memories and affections that go with life on the soil, is bound to be forcibly resisted. In other words the Arab claims rest on two distinct foundations: the natural right of a settled population ... to remain in possession of the land of its birthright; and the acquired political rights which ... Great Britain is under a contractual obligation to recognize and uphold.