Ahmed Moor
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| Imagem: cortesia de Ahmed Moor |
As palavras "campo de refugiados" podem evocar a imagem de uma cidade de tendas, imunda e exposta. No entanto, durante muito tempo e para muitos palestinos, os campos assumiram uma forma diferente. O que começou como cidades de tendas evoluiu para a nossa paisagem comum na Palestina, no Líbano, na Jordânia e na Síria - uma rede densa e apinhada de edifícios cinzentos e vielas estreitas.
No campo de Shatila, no sul de Beirute, local do infame massacre de civis perpetrado por Ariel Sharon em 1982, fios elétricos pendem ao acaso nas passarelas enquanto heróis da resistência palestina espreitam das paredes, as suas imagens inevitavelmente desgastadas ou lascadas, marcando as décadas, os hectares de tempo. No Norte do Líbano, o acampamento Baddawi justapõe-se à beleza impressionante da cordilheira do Monte Líbano, com os seus picos nevados no Inverno e na Primavera. Em Gaza, o Mediterrâneo, cujas ondas quebram violentamente no Inverno, modera a gravidade da vida dos refugiados - quando a vida lá ainda era possível.
Nasci em Tal al Sultan, um dos oito campos de refugiados da Faixa de Gaza. Situa-se no menor canto de Gaza, no sudoeste, confinando com o Egito e o Mediterrâneo. A casa da minha família dava para a Rota Filadélfia, o nome israelense para a estreita zona tampão ao longo da fronteira entre Gaza e o Egito. Nos anos anteriores à retirada de Ariel Sharon em 2005, os militares israelienses patrulhavam o perímetro em jipes verde-oliva, com as suas antenas a erguerem-se grotescamente para cima, estragando o nosso horizonte. Em dezembro, Benjamin Netanyahu declarou a sua intenção de reocupar o país.
Os refugiados palestinos, muitos dos quais nunca viveram em outro lugar, identificam-se com os seus bairros - as ruas, os nomes, a sensação das estações. Simultaneamente, eles retrocedem na história em busca de um sentimento de enraizamento, de um lugar e de uma identidade. Ser refugiado é fundamentalmente estar inquieto. Não somos de onde viemos, experiência que conheço em primeira mão.
A família da minha mãe, Edwan, veio de Barbara, uma aldeia que ficava a 16 quilômetros a nordeste da cidade de Gaza. A aldeia foi o lar de Yusuf al-Barbarawi, um estudioso da lei islâmica que viveu no século XIV. A sua primeira mesquita foi construída durante o século XVI, servindo várias centenas de aldeões. Em 1883, uma pesquisa realizada pelo Fundo de Exploração da Palestina, uma sociedade britânica fundada em 1865 para o estudo da Palestina, descreveu "uma aldeia de bom tamanho, cercada por jardins com dois lagos e oliveiras a leste. A areia invadindo a costa... parado perto das sebes de cactos dos jardins."
O primo do meu avô materno era Kamal Adwan, um proeminente líder da OLP. Ele foi assassinado em Beirute em 1973 por Ehud Barak, que se tornou primeiro-ministro de Israel. Meio milhão de pessoas marcharam no funeral de Kamal e, mais tarde, um hospital com o mesmo nome foi erguido em Gaza em sua homenagem. No mês passado, assisti a um vídeo de um bebê de dois meses, Mahmoud Fattouh, ofegante, dando seu último suspiro antes de morrer de fome. Hussam Abu Safiya, chefe de pediatria do Hospital Kamal Adwan, disse ter visto "muitas" dessas mortes.
Do lado do meu pai, a família Abu Moor é uma entre várias que juntas compõem a tribo beduína Tarabin. Outros ramos importantes da família incluem Abu Sitta, Abu'athreh, Alsufi, Aldebari, Abuedwan, Abusnaymeh, Abutaylakh e Al'moor. Salman Abu Sitta, o estudioso que mapeou a Nakba, é um parente distante.
Anos atrás, enquanto mergulhava na cidade jordaniana de Aqaba, no Mar Vermelho, conheci um homem que tinha uma notável semelhança com meu pai na juventude. Ele era um parente distante do ramo Aqaba da tribo Tarabin. Com ele aprendi que as terras tribais se estendem desde a costa ocidental do Mar Vermelho, passando pela Palestina/Israel, até à Arábia Saudita, na costa leste. Tradicionalmente, os fellahin, os camponeses palestinos que habitavam o interior arável do país, com as suas vastas planícies e altas colinas, não se casavam com os beduínos. Os grupos foram considerados, e continuam sendo considerados, como distintos. Mas na panela de pressão que é a Faixa de Gaza, as linhas confundiram-se e a distinção começou a desvanecer-se. Os meus pais, ambos nascidos em Gaza, conheceram-se e casaram. As circunstâncias do seu namoro teriam sido totalmente improváveis em uma história alternativa da Palestina.
As memórias nacionais são fabricadas, mas muitas vezes estão enraizadas em uma experiência comum. As histórias que contamos sobre nós mesmos formam a base da identidade, que se funde em algo maior, o sentimento de nação. Os palestinos têm muitas dessas histórias, mas talvez a mais política, a mais animadora ao longo das gerações, não seja uma história única. A Nakba é composta por muitas histórias de povos diversos - proprietários de terras, camponeses, beduínos, cristãos, muçulmanos - reunidos em uma forja ardente. A limpeza étnica da Palestina pelas forças judaicas em 1948 e 1949 é esse acontecimento fundacional; é a nossa linguagem comum, a marca indelével. A catástrofe de hoje em Gaza - o deslocamento massivo e o genocídio - tem a sua origem na Nakba e no que veio antes dela. As nossas histórias traçam os elos de uma cadeia ininterrupta, um catálogo de ruína e resiliência de um povo.
Do lado do meu pai, a família Abu Moor é uma entre várias que juntas compõem a tribo beduína Tarabin. Outros ramos importantes da família incluem Abu Sitta, Abu'athreh, Alsufi, Aldebari, Abuedwan, Abusnaymeh, Abutaylakh e Al'moor. Salman Abu Sitta, o estudioso que mapeou a Nakba, é um parente distante.
Anos atrás, enquanto mergulhava na cidade jordaniana de Aqaba, no Mar Vermelho, conheci um homem que tinha uma notável semelhança com meu pai na juventude. Ele era um parente distante do ramo Aqaba da tribo Tarabin. Com ele aprendi que as terras tribais se estendem desde a costa ocidental do Mar Vermelho, passando pela Palestina/Israel, até à Arábia Saudita, na costa leste. Tradicionalmente, os fellahin, os camponeses palestinos que habitavam o interior arável do país, com as suas vastas planícies e altas colinas, não se casavam com os beduínos. Os grupos foram considerados, e continuam sendo considerados, como distintos. Mas na panela de pressão que é a Faixa de Gaza, as linhas confundiram-se e a distinção começou a desvanecer-se. Os meus pais, ambos nascidos em Gaza, conheceram-se e casaram. As circunstâncias do seu namoro teriam sido totalmente improváveis em uma história alternativa da Palestina.
As memórias nacionais são fabricadas, mas muitas vezes estão enraizadas em uma experiência comum. As histórias que contamos sobre nós mesmos formam a base da identidade, que se funde em algo maior, o sentimento de nação. Os palestinos têm muitas dessas histórias, mas talvez a mais política, a mais animadora ao longo das gerações, não seja uma história única. A Nakba é composta por muitas histórias de povos diversos - proprietários de terras, camponeses, beduínos, cristãos, muçulmanos - reunidos em uma forja ardente. A limpeza étnica da Palestina pelas forças judaicas em 1948 e 1949 é esse acontecimento fundacional; é a nossa linguagem comum, a marca indelével. A catástrofe de hoje em Gaza - o deslocamento massivo e o genocídio - tem a sua origem na Nakba e no que veio antes dela. As nossas histórias traçam os elos de uma cadeia ininterrupta, um catálogo de ruína e resiliência de um povo.
Quando criança, perguntei-me muitas vezes como é que um bando de colonos e refugiados da Europa conseguiu deslocar a minha família, juntamente com centenas de milhares de outros palestinos. Lutei para imaginar a cena e não consegui compreender os recursos materiais e a organização necessários para a tarefa.
Na realidade, o esforço sionista para colonizar a Palestina foi um projeto de cinquenta anos, um exercício de vontade política e organizacional que abrangeu continentes e recorreu a vastos recursos. Aprendi como o Fundo Nacional Judaico canalizava homens, material e armas para o Yishuv, a comunidade de imigrantes judeus na Palestina antes de 1948. Aprendi sobre a sofisticação dos sionistas do início do século XX e o acesso a Londres e Berlim e percebi que os palestinos nunca tiveram uma chance. Em 1937, enquanto presidente da Agência Judaica, David Ben-Gurion escreveu:
Devemos expulsar os árabes e tomar os seus lugares... e, se tivermos de usar a força - não para desapropriar os árabes do Negev e da Transjordânia, mas para garantir o nosso próprio direito de nos estabelecermos nesses locais - então temos a força à nossa disposição.
Este fato tornou-se evidente para os residentes palestinos na década de 1920 e posteriormente. Foi confirmado pelas declarações dos líderes ideológicos, militares e civis de Israel. As primeiras décadas do século XX assistiram à revolta dos palestinos contra o aumento do assentamento judaico e da colonização das suas terras. A revolta desenvolveu-se inicialmente de forma não violenta, sob a forma de greves e da recusa em pagar impostos às autoridades coloniais britânicas. Face à repressão brutal, a resistência acabou por se tornar violenta. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, um dos primeiros nacionalistas palestinos, combatente e homônimo do braço militar do Hamas, foi morto pelos britânicos em 1935. A Grande Revolta Árabe, um levante de três anos que começou em 1936 e acabou fracassando, baseou-se no legado de al-Qassam e procurou forçar os britânicos a reconhecer um Estado palestiniano.
Em 1947, quando um grande número de imigrantes judeus da Europa — refugiados que fugiam das ruínas da Segunda Guerra Mundial e do Holocausto — chegaram à Palestina, a violência explodiu. O governo colonial britânico murchou e procurou renunciar à responsabilidade pela Palestina. As Nações Unidas responderam com um plano de partilha: 55 por cento das terras seriam atribuídas ao Yishuv e 45 por cento aos palestinos, embora os judeus constituíssem apenas 33 por cento da população e possuíssem apenas cerca de 7 por cento das terras. A aprovação do plano foi recebida com descrença e raiva pelos palestinos e pelos seus aliados árabes. Seguiu-se uma violência na qual o bem preparado Yishuv, tendo planejado meticulosamente uma declaração de independência, rapidamente mobilizou mais de 50.000 combatentes e sobrecarregou os 10.000 voluntários de várias origens que estavam preparados para lutar pelos palestinos.
On March 10, 1948, Ben-Gurion, leading the Zionist forces, approved Plan Dalet. It called for
mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.
Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.
The displacement of the Palestinians was thus an official program of the Jewish state. Of 1.9 million Palestinian Arab residents between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, 750,000 were permanently displaced. Some were pushed into Lebanon, where they continue to reside in camps—stateless with limited rights to education and work. Others went to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Arabian Gulf countries by any means possible. But some 156,000 Palestinians managed to remain behind; their descendents now hold Israeli citizenship and are regarded as a fifth column within Israel. Many do not view themselves as Israeli, preferring to be identified simply as Palestinians in Israel.
Nada Matta, born into a Palestinian family in Israel, is a professor of sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She shared her family’s story with me earlier this year.
The Matta family is from the Galilee, a fertile region in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Like other Palestinian villages in the north, their village, Mi’liya, was ethnically cleansed in 1948. But unlike the vast majority of those who were forced from their homes, Nada’s family was permitted to return after the intercession of the village priest, and Mi’liya became one of a handful of Christian villages that would go on to act as the hub of Palestinian life in Israel. Her father was among the first generation to be educated in Hebrew, and he passed as Jewish to gain opportunity.
Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship lived under martial law until 1966 and continue to face institutionalized housing and other discrimination. They are second-class citizens, yet they also enjoy privileges that Palestinians living in camps, or under occupation, do not. Our experiences of Zionism are of the same type, if not degree; solidarities exist, but they can be fraught. When my family lived in Ramallah twenty-five years ago, our neighbor was a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship. She seemed exotic, reading Hebrew labels on everyday items effortlessly. Her car carried a yellow plate — a mark of privilege reserved for Israelis — allowing her to drive through checkpoints and on settler roads, even into Israel itself. Unlike Palestinians in Israel, the vast majority of refugees were stranded in a psychological no-man's land — a place inhabited by ghosts, heavy with symbolism.
The Matta family is from the Galilee, a fertile region in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Like other Palestinian villages in the north, their village, Mi’liya, was ethnically cleansed in 1948. But unlike the vast majority of those who were forced from their homes, Nada’s family was permitted to return after the intercession of the village priest, and Mi’liya became one of a handful of Christian villages that would go on to act as the hub of Palestinian life in Israel. Her father was among the first generation to be educated in Hebrew, and he passed as Jewish to gain opportunity.
Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship lived under martial law until 1966 and continue to face institutionalized housing and other discrimination. They are second-class citizens, yet they also enjoy privileges that Palestinians living in camps, or under occupation, do not. Our experiences of Zionism are of the same type, if not degree; solidarities exist, but they can be fraught. When my family lived in Ramallah twenty-five years ago, our neighbor was a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship. She seemed exotic, reading Hebrew labels on everyday items effortlessly. Her car carried a yellow plate — a mark of privilege reserved for Israelis — allowing her to drive through checkpoints and on settler roads, even into Israel itself. Unlike Palestinians in Israel, the vast majority of refugees were stranded in a psychological no-man's land — a place inhabited by ghosts, heavy with symbolism.
I've known Hilary Rantisi for over a decade; we met when I was a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and she was leading the Middle East Initiative there. She is now Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. She organizes an annual faculty and student trek to Palestine/Israel, showcasing the violence and brutality of life under apartheid.
The Rantisis are a well-known Christian family in Palestine; Hilary’s father was elected to be deputy mayor of Ramallah in 1976. The family’s roots go back to the fifth century in Lydd, just southeast of Tel Aviv. For millennia the city was a pivotal hub connecting the trade routes of the Hejaz, or the Arabian Peninsula, with the Levant. In the early twentieth century Hilary’s family worked to manufacture soap from olive oil, a craft that continues across Palestine and Lebanon today; a modern visitor to Tyre can observe tradesman in their antique vocation most days of the week.
Hilary’s grandparents married in 1931 and by 1948 they’d had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Her father had memories of the house they lived in before 1948, which he later recounted to his children in Ramallah. Hilary’s grandmother, Faiqa Shehadeh, was a matriarch who could read in Arabic, English and German at a time when most people were illiterate, including her husband. Born in 1912 to the small Christian community in Gaza, she lost her parents to the pandemic one hundred years ago. She was sent to live in an orphanage in Jerusalem which was run by Lutheran Germans, and served children of various religions, including Jews.
Lydd was ethnically cleansed in July 1948; Hilary’s father was twelve. On July 12, Israeli militants—the state was declared in May — knocked on the door of the family home. Hilary’s grandmother answered while carrying her youngest, a six-month-old infant. The troops, recent immigrants from Europe, instructed the family to leave the house while prohibiting them from taking anything along, and after a conversation in German, the family was told that they could return at the end of the day.
The Rantisis first sought refuge at their church. They found their passage blocked by Israeli paramilitaries who directed them to the hills. It was at that time that they realized they were being expelled from their homes. Despairing, they started walking in what they called the “death march.” The family walked for three days until they reached Ni’lin. They were met there by Red Cross trucks, which transported them to Ramallah. In Hilary’s telling, “It was three days during Ramadan, and it was very hot. There was fighting and a curfew and people died on the way from heatstroke. My father remembers violence and death — a child fell under a tractor and died.”
Looting by Israeli forces was widespread, not unlike today. Hilary’s father witnessed what was occurring everywhere. He remembered, “there was a checkpoint where a new groom, from the Hanhan family, refused to give gold which he’d given his wife. He was shot in front of everyone and killed.”
The family were housed in the Friends Quaker School in Ramallah in a distant echo of the scenes unfolding in Gaza today. Space was limited and they were given a corner of the classroom to live in alongside four other families. By September the Red Cross had provided the family of twelve with a tent, and that winter, when it snowed in Ramallah, it collapsed under the weight of the snow.
The Rantisis are a well-known Christian family in Palestine; Hilary’s father was elected to be deputy mayor of Ramallah in 1976. The family’s roots go back to the fifth century in Lydd, just southeast of Tel Aviv. For millennia the city was a pivotal hub connecting the trade routes of the Hejaz, or the Arabian Peninsula, with the Levant. In the early twentieth century Hilary’s family worked to manufacture soap from olive oil, a craft that continues across Palestine and Lebanon today; a modern visitor to Tyre can observe tradesman in their antique vocation most days of the week.
Hilary’s grandparents married in 1931 and by 1948 they’d had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Her father had memories of the house they lived in before 1948, which he later recounted to his children in Ramallah. Hilary’s grandmother, Faiqa Shehadeh, was a matriarch who could read in Arabic, English and German at a time when most people were illiterate, including her husband. Born in 1912 to the small Christian community in Gaza, she lost her parents to the pandemic one hundred years ago. She was sent to live in an orphanage in Jerusalem which was run by Lutheran Germans, and served children of various religions, including Jews.
Lydd was ethnically cleansed in July 1948; Hilary’s father was twelve. On July 12, Israeli militants—the state was declared in May — knocked on the door of the family home. Hilary’s grandmother answered while carrying her youngest, a six-month-old infant. The troops, recent immigrants from Europe, instructed the family to leave the house while prohibiting them from taking anything along, and after a conversation in German, the family was told that they could return at the end of the day.
The Rantisis first sought refuge at their church. They found their passage blocked by Israeli paramilitaries who directed them to the hills. It was at that time that they realized they were being expelled from their homes. Despairing, they started walking in what they called the “death march.” The family walked for three days until they reached Ni’lin. They were met there by Red Cross trucks, which transported them to Ramallah. In Hilary’s telling, “It was three days during Ramadan, and it was very hot. There was fighting and a curfew and people died on the way from heatstroke. My father remembers violence and death — a child fell under a tractor and died.”
Looting by Israeli forces was widespread, not unlike today. Hilary’s father witnessed what was occurring everywhere. He remembered, “there was a checkpoint where a new groom, from the Hanhan family, refused to give gold which he’d given his wife. He was shot in front of everyone and killed.”
The family were housed in the Friends Quaker School in Ramallah in a distant echo of the scenes unfolding in Gaza today. Space was limited and they were given a corner of the classroom to live in alongside four other families. By September the Red Cross had provided the family of twelve with a tent, and that winter, when it snowed in Ramallah, it collapsed under the weight of the snow.
My parents' families experienced similar fates. My mother’s village, Barbara, which had survived the Byzantines, the Crusaders and Mamluks, and the British was destroyed by Zionist forces beginning on November 5, 1948. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris:
In the south... the army’s operations combined features of border-clearing and internal “cleansing”, and nowhere was this clearer than in the area roughly between Majdal and the northern edge of the Gaza Strip. . . The orders to the battalions and the engineers platoon were to expel to Gaza “the Arab refugees” from “Mamama, al Jura, Khirbet Khisas [misnamed ‘Khirbet Khazaz’, Ni’ilya, al Jiyya, Barbara, Beit Jirja, Hirbiya and Deir Suneid” and “to prevent their return by destroying the villages.” The paths leading to the villages were to be mined.
Upon visiting the site in 1984, historian Walid Khalidi, cofounder of the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut and Washington, D.C., wrote:
The crumbled walls and debris of houses are all that remains of the village buildings. The debris is overgrown with thorns and brush. Old eucalyptus and sycamore trees and cactuses also grow on the site. Some of the old streets are clearly identifiable. One area of the site serves as a garbage dump and a junkyard for old cars. The surrounding lands are planted by Israeli farmers in corn.
At the same time, and not far away, my father’s family fled their homes in Be’er Al Sabaa, a Bedouin village in al Naqab, the desert that sits astride the Red Sea. Today Be’er Al Sabaa is the Israeli city of Beersheva. And al Naqab is referred to as the Negev by the Israelis who live there.
In 1948 my father’s family were farmers. Their lands extended into the area of what today is the Gaza Strip. When my grandfather learned about the massacre at Deir Yassin he anticipated an attack by Israeli militias—and he took his family and their single camel and livestock and fled to the outer reaches of his farm, not more than three miles away. His intention was to return to the modest house he lived in with my grandmother within a week or two. The weeks turned into months, and years, and now, decades. My grandfather died a young man in the Gaza refugee camp in 1951, possibly of pneumonia; my father was born that same year, and my grandmother was left to care for two small boys in a tent, in misery, among other refugees.
My father described those early years to me. He recalled how UNRWA began to build more permanent structures for refugees in Gaza in the early 1950s. When he was five, the family moved from the tent he was born in into an eighty-square-foot room in the town of Rafah, in southeast Gaza. He recalls one massacre during Israel’s first occupation of Gaza in 1956, documented by Joe Sacco in his book Footnotes in Gaza (2009). Israeli troops are believed to have executed hundreds of men in an organized rampage designed to kill the fedayeen, the armed resistance to Israel at that time. Moshe Dayan, who led the Israeli forces, wrote that “if El Arish [in Egypt] and Rafah fall to us, the Gaza Strip will be isolated and unable, alone, to hold out.”
My father, Atia, who is now seventy-three, recalled the horror as a five-year-old boy:
In 1948 my father’s family were farmers. Their lands extended into the area of what today is the Gaza Strip. When my grandfather learned about the massacre at Deir Yassin he anticipated an attack by Israeli militias—and he took his family and their single camel and livestock and fled to the outer reaches of his farm, not more than three miles away. His intention was to return to the modest house he lived in with my grandmother within a week or two. The weeks turned into months, and years, and now, decades. My grandfather died a young man in the Gaza refugee camp in 1951, possibly of pneumonia; my father was born that same year, and my grandmother was left to care for two small boys in a tent, in misery, among other refugees.
My father described those early years to me. He recalled how UNRWA began to build more permanent structures for refugees in Gaza in the early 1950s. When he was five, the family moved from the tent he was born in into an eighty-square-foot room in the town of Rafah, in southeast Gaza. He recalls one massacre during Israel’s first occupation of Gaza in 1956, documented by Joe Sacco in his book Footnotes in Gaza (2009). Israeli troops are believed to have executed hundreds of men in an organized rampage designed to kill the fedayeen, the armed resistance to Israel at that time. Moshe Dayan, who led the Israeli forces, wrote that “if El Arish [in Egypt] and Rafah fall to us, the Gaza Strip will be isolated and unable, alone, to hold out.”
My father, Atia, who is now seventy-three, recalled the horror as a five-year-old boy:
They came to Rafah and took over the offices of the “Egyptian Governor” who was the head of the administration in Rafah. We used to live in one room in the refugee camp by the railway and were totally dependent on what we used to get from UNRWA like most of the people. I remember they called all men into the school and killed so many of them and many people were trying to go where the killing took place. All of a sudden there was more shooting and I remember my mom took me and my brother to our neighbor’s house where over ten families gathered with very frightened children. We didn’t have any food and my uncle was told that there are people giving food at the ration center operated by UNRWA at that time. So he went and we stayed the whole day waiting for him to get some food. He came in the evening without anything.
When I ask my father about his experience, he jokes that his kids, my siblings and I, have had it easy. He talks about his years as a child laborer and an orphan with some humor before our discussion turns to Palestine today. The reality is that there are many children in Gaza who are living much as my father did: orphans, hungry and displaced, yearning to go home, a place that doesn’t exist anymore for most of them. And I think about those whose lives have been snatched away, maliciously and unthinkingly, more than 13,000 of them now. And I reflect on all the five-year-olds, like my father, who will recount the horror of their brutalization in conversations with their children seventy years from now.
Em 1956, Ben-Gurion explicou a Nahum Goldmann a necessidade de uma "política anti-árabe" contínua:
Por que os árabes deveriam fazer a paz? Se eu fosse um líder árabe nunca faria acordos com Israel. Isso é natural: tomámos o país deles. Claro, Deus prometeu isso para nós, mas o que isso importa para eles? Nosso Deus não é o deles. Viemos de Israel, é verdade, mas há dois mil anos, e o que isso significa para eles? Houve anti-semitismo, os nazistas, Hitler, Auschwitz, mas foi culpa deles? Eles só veem uma coisa: viemos aqui e roubamos o país deles. Por que eles deveriam aceitar isso?
Nessa mesma conversa de fim de noite, Ben-Gurion, ainda primeiro-ministro de Israel, confidenciou as suas dúvidas de que o país, um enclave sionista militarizado no mundo árabe, iria resistir - uma concessão notável ao total erro do colonialismo e da militância como um modo de vida permanente.
Entretanto, a limpeza étnica da Palestina continua. Em fevereiro, soube que o último remanescente da quinta Abu Moor em Gaza, onde o meu pai nasceu, foi agora incluído em uma zona tampão de um quilômetro - literalmente uma terra de ninguém - que Israel desenhou na Faixa. As famílias deslocadas do norte de Gaza, incluindo a minha, questionam-se se lhes será permitido retornar. Aqueles que foram mortos pelos israelenses os meus primos e os seus filhos e trinta a quarenta mil outros seres humanos - decompõem-se no solo de Gaza ou sob os escombros. Onde os seus cadáveres se degradam sem dignidade, os israelenses dançam.
A história revela muito. Ser palestino é reivindicar um vasto terreno baldio. No entanto, não estamos sozinhos. Israel continuará a ser fustigado pela força da ilegitimidade moral e do isolamento; o genocídio em Gaza forjou essa garantia com sangue.
Ahmed Moor é escritor e coeditor de After Sionism: One State for Israel and Palestine. Seus escritos também apareceram na Al Jazeera, The Nation e na London Review of Books.
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