domingo, 13 de janeiro de 2013

Israel vs Palestina: História de um conflito XXVI ( 03/04 2002 - ODS em Nablus)


A ODS - Operação Defensive Shield começou no dia 29 de março de 2002 com a incursão da IDF em Ramallah e o sítio de Yasser Arafat na Mukata'a.
No dia 1° de abril a IDF invadiu Tulkarm e Qalquilya. 
No dia 2, foi a vez de Belém e do sítio da Basílica da Natividade que duraria até o dia 10 de maio.
No dia 03 de abril os tanques entraram em Jenin e em Nablus, fechando o cerco em torno de seis das principais cidades da Cisjordânia, suas cidadezinhas satélites e campos de refugiados.
As únicas cidades "poupadas" nesta operação específica foram Jericó e Hebron - sitiadas anteriormente.
Hebron é quase um caso à parte, pois vive sob ocupação civil e militar permanente e sofre constantes incursões de revista violentas de outros batalhões.
Hoje vamos a Nablus, que é o capítulo da ODS neste domingo. 

Nablus é relativamente "recente" - comparada com Jerusalém, Hebron, Gaza, Belém.
Foi construída em 72 DC, na Samaria bíblica, pelo imperador romano Titus que a chamou de Flávia Neápolis em homenagem ao pai Flavius Vespasiano. A foto ao lado data de 1898.
Durante o processo de conquista islâmica, os Otomanos a embelezaram ainda mais. Daí seu grande patrimônio arquitetural - destruído pela IDF e em grande parte restaurado pela UNESCO, exceto as ruínas romanas.

 A cidade é rodeada de montes. Um deles é citado na bíblia. O monte chamado Gerizim, venerado pelos samaritanos.
Se não ficasse na Palestina, Nablus seria uma destinação turística recomendável e recomendada. Mas o desinteresse má-fé ou/e ignorância das agências de turismo, somados às barragens da IDF, dissuadem o passeio (seguro) dos estrangeiros menos determinados.
A cidade em que nasceu Suha, filha de Yasser Arafat, tem 300 mil habitantes e é o pulmão comercial da Palestina. É famosa pela qualidade do linho que fabrica, por seus ateliês de tecelagem, o azeite de oliva  (tudo isto, exportável, se os Acordos de Oslo não os privassem deste negócio rentável). Suas iguarias culinárias também são famosas. As receitas com frango (caipira) são deliciosas e os doces de lá são de comer ajoelhado - sobretudo o kunafa.
Mas a indústria mais típica da cidade é a de saponáceo.  Sabão e sabonete nabluenses (empilhados à esquerda em uma caverna-fábrica antes de ser cortado e adornado) são cobiçados e invejados.   Aliás, Nablus ficou famosa na Europa durante as Cruzadas, justamente por causa da qualidade do sabonete de oliva que fabricava.    Os cavaleiros ocidentais gostaram tanto do produto, que "observaram" a fabricação para revelá-la ao voltar para casa e aproveitar deste artesanato nabluense em seu comércio.   A receita chegou à cidade de Marselha, na França, que fez do produto uma marca registrada.    O famoso savon de Marseille é "inspirado", em detalhes, no nabluense. Porém, na minha opinião, aquém do original palestino feito até hoje nos moldes antepassados sem nenhum produto químico.

O general Ariel Sharon sabia da importância histórica e econômica da antiga Flávia Neápolis ao planejar sua invasão desenfreada.    
A investida e o sítio de Nablus durante a Defensive Shield durariam três semanas. Até o dia 21 de abril.
O ataque desta segunda cidade mais populada da Cisjordânia (e uma das mais bonitas) começou como era costume da IDF, a fim de fragilizar a população agredida. Corte de energia para os habitantes ficarem incomunicáveis e de água para ficarem vulneráveis, devido à rápida deterioração de seus corpos desidratados.
Os instrumentos de Sharon foram dois batalhões das forças especiais de infantaria. Em concomitância com os Apaches que atacavam elementos móveis e imóveis na praça principal e nas ruas que a esta levavam.
A cidade abriga três campos de refugiados compostos de famílias exiladas de suas casas e cidades em 1948, durante a Naqba.
Dois deles, criados em 1950, eram centros nevráugicos da resistência palestina. Razão que Ehud Barak e Ariel Sharon evocavam para as invasões repetitivas que organizavam nesses lugares.
Um deles é Askar, que abriga cerca de 15 mil refugiados dentre os quais 40% menores de 14 anos e 20% menores de 24 anos, de famílias exiladas de 36 vilarejos palestinos da área de Lydd, Haifa e Jaffa. 
O outro é Balata, à esquerda, que abriga mais de 23 mil refugiados das mesmas idades do campo de Askar, de famílias exiladas de 60 vilarejos e das cidades de Lydd, Jaffa e Ramleh, muitos deles de origem beduína.
Desta vez a IDF entrou para causar danos humanos, e também, mais ainda, danos materiais. E foi por isto que os Apaches e o Caterpillars armados (fotos acima) visaram o centro histórico e os campos de refugiados.
O centro histórico, composto da Casbah e al-Yasmina, têm áreas que parecem labirintos, com becos, vielas e ruazinhas apertadas que conectam os bairros. As construções são de pedra e extremamente sólidas; as mais recentes datam do século XV.
Estes locais foram investidos simultanemante por dois batalhões com métodos distintos e complementares.
A Brigada Golani dentro dos tanques achzarit ("cruel", em hebraico) e caterpillars armados. Ela foi mandada na frente para "abrir passagem" - empurrando os resistentes palestinos para a parte oeste da Casbah. O propósito desta manobra era de entregá-los à Brigada de Paraquedistas, de mãos beijadas.
Conforme declaração posterior do comandante desta Brigada especial, coronel Aviv Kochavi, o general Shaul Mofaz que comandava a IDF estava insatisfeito que Qalqiliyah e Tulkarm tivessem se rendido "quase sem palestinos mortos". Desta vez era melhor, segundo ele,  não deixar "homens armados" em Nablus que voltassem a atacá-los mais tarde - (como se os filhos não tomassem as dores dos pais e os que nascessem mais tarde, nascessem conformados com o status quo que Israel impunha.)
A ordem foi acatada e os torpedos dos Apaches choveram sobre a cidade milenar e suas ruas estreitinhas que dificultavam a passagem dos cruéis e dos caterpillars armados.
Um dos jovens palestinos que sobreviveu à investida disse que "estávamos esperando que os soldados descessem dos tanques e bulldozers e viessem lutar conosco a armas iguais, mas eles ficaram escondidos dentro de suas carapaças atirando ao alvo e nos derrubando como se fôssemos pinos e suas bombas bolas de boliche superdimensionadas."
Quando o comandante palestino Ahmed Tabouk foi morto por um atirador da IDF no dia 08, os resistentes avisaram que render-se-iam.
Mas Ariel Sharon não estava interessado em rendição nenhuma.
Ignorou a Convenção de Genebra e nas duas horas seguintes a IDF intensificou o fogo em vez de dar trégua para que os rendidos se juntassem e saíssem de braços erguidos.
Os oficiais seguiam a ordem velada de matar o maior número possível de resistentes. As mulhres e crianças que se encontrassem no caminho eram vítimas dos mesmo estigma.  
Quando a rendição foi finalmente acatada, os soldados da IDF mostraram a cara e o balanço de mortos e feridos foi de desproporcionalidade gritante.
A IDF perdeu um oficial, vítima de fogo amigo.
Quanto a Nablus, centenas de prédios antigos sofreram estragos, sessenta dos quais de extrema gravidade - dentre estes, dezessete de alto valor histórico, inclusive o Palácio Abd al-Hadi (à direita).
As perdas humanas foram grandes. Feridos à parte (considerando a dificuldade de discriminar a gravidade das sequelas psicológicas, físicas, por falta de socorro organizado e de seguimento psicológico adequado) oitenta palestinos foram mortos dentre os quais cerca de cinquenta civis - quinze mulheres e menores de 15 anos.
Centenas de homens de idades variadas foram presos - reunidos à Pinochet, mas não em estádio; em ruas e praças.
No mesmo espírito destrutivo, os veículos militares chamados cruéis se locomoviam provocando o máximo de danos materiais e os caterpillars cumpriam seu papel conhecido de demolir o maior número de casas.
A restauração da Casbah e al-Yasmina - cidadelas com patrimônio histórico elevadíssimo - custaria à UNESCO cerca de U$114 milhões de dólares - sem Israel desembolsar nem um tostão furado.
No dia 21 de abril, o governo de Israel declarou o fim oficial da ODS - Operação Defensive Shield iniciada no dia 29 de março de 2002.
Os danos materiais na Palestina inteira foram avaliados a U$361 milhões de dólares.


Ariel Sharon foi a Nablus conferir pessoalmente, de camarote blindado, os estragos que causara.

Depoimentos de sobreviventes, conferidos pela Anistia Internacional.
"I saw the bulldozing of the Ghanem house from my house. I saw Sulayman Ghanem and his wife on the street. I shouted to them from the window and asked if the rest of the neighbours had left. He told me his family had all left and I asked about the al-Shu’bi family and he said that he thought they had left as well. I then looked and I saw one of the large bulldozers coming from the west side bulldozing the al-Shu’bi family house and I saw the house tilt over. Without even thinking, I yelled to the soldier in the bulldozer, ‘Let the residents leave the house.’ At this point the soldier came out of the bulldozer, took his weapon and started to fire in my direction. I moved out of the way and the bullets hit the wall of my house. You can still see the holes. At this moment, I told my children to leave the house and I told two other families nearby also to leave. We headed for the mosque."
Ahmad Fu’ad al-Najjar

"The soldier took me to my neighbour’s house, about five metres away. It was now about 9am on Sunday. There were about 6-7 soldiers behind me. My neighbour saw me and shouted out my name. The soldier told me that if I said anything, he would shoot me.
We entered my neighbour’s house. The soldiers began to drill a hole in the wall that led to another house. I went with three soldiers and the dog through the wall into the next building. The soldier kept the gun positioned at my head. When we arrived in the next building, it was empty. It wasn’t a house, just an empty building. The soldiers then opened a hole in another wall. This happened about six or seven times. In each case, when we passed from wall to wall and building to building, the soldiers always kept me in front of them.
At the last place, there was an iron door. One of the soldiers opened the iron door and told me to go out. I pulled the door back and just as I was walking out, I heard shooting. The soldiers pulled me back from the alley and began to return fire. I was about one metre behind the soldiers. I was crouching down while they were firing."
Maher Salim

"We live in a very old house that was built under the Ottoman Empire. When the IDF first came to the door, we rushed to open it so that they would not explode it, as I know they have done with others. I was in the house with my family and my brother and his family. There were about 12 children between 3-18 years, four women, my brother, and myself. When they entered the house they asked me where were the fighters? I told them there were no fighters. I had seen fighters in the passages below my house but they were never in my house. They said that I must tell them where the fighters were or they will demolish the house. I did not answer them. Within a few seconds, they brought a huge hammer. After that they opened a large hole in the guestroom wall and planted some dynamite in it. They took us out to the courtyard, and with a remote control they blew up part of the house. It was now about 12pm.
I thought that after this they would go, but instead the IDF set up an operation in the neighbours house. After the explosion, the neighbour’s house and my house had no divide. From my neighbour’s balcony the IDF would have a view to the east. The IDF told us to go to one room and not to leave. We had no water, no electricity and no communications. We asked the soldiers through the bathroom window for coffee and water, they told me to shut the window. During the days the soldiers were in the house, they continued to fire from the house. I can understand Hebrew and I heard a soldier bragging that he had shot three Palestinians."
Ghazi Abu Kishik.

"The soldiers bound our hands in front with plastic handcuffs. We were taken into APCs and IDF soldiers told us to keep our eyes to the ground. There were about eight other men with me. They took us to an apartment building in Rafidiyeh. When we reached there, we were blindfolded and told to sit on the stairs. From just under my blindfold I could see soldiers going up and down the stairs. I could also hear the sound of children on the upper floors and I assumed residents were still inside the building.
We were kept there for three hours. We were told to keep our heads lowered and not to move At about 12pm, we were told to form a human chain with our hands and were put in a truck. There must have been about 50 men at this stage. We were driven about 11 kilometres to Huwara military base. When we arrived there, we were taken to an open place and told to sit. We were still blindfolded and still had our hands tied our personal belongings were taken from us. We were then taken into a tent. The soldiers told us not to speak to one another, and not to move the blindfolds from our eyes. There was a young man there, maybe 18 years old, who moved his blindfold a bit. I saw from below my blindfold a soldier approach the man and hit him on the head with a baton. Then a soldier came in and asked who could speak Hebrew. Someone raised his hand and the soldier told him to translate and asked us to repeat what he said. He said, ‘Bring me humus’, ‘Bring me ful [beans]’ and ‘I like the IDF’.
At this point, I needed to use the bathroom. I asked the soldier and he took me. When we reached the place, I asked him how I was meant to use the bathroom with my hands tied. He told me to just to do it in my pants, it wasn’t his problem. I was taken back and remained in this place and in the same position until 11pm."
Muhammad Daraghmeh
"Around 5pm on that Sunday, tanks came into ‘Askar camp. … My sister Suna was standing by the metal door, which leads on to the road. My father was in the courtyard. I then heard shooting. I called on my father to take the children inside. There were about seven children all around him. He gathered them and went inside. I did not see him come out again.
My neighbour Ahmad then yelled that Suna had been hit. Suna had just been closing the door when she said she felt something hit her head. At that moment, we did not realize my father had also been shot. We went into his room after about 10 minutes and saw that he looked very ill but we thought he had a heart attack.
We called on a friend that worked close to a medical relief centre that had opened up in an empty house and asked him if he could make contact with a doctor, as we knew no ambulance could reach us. After about one hour, the doctor and some nurses came. The doctor provided Suna with some first aid and rang the PRCS for an ambulance. The ambulance tried to reach us on three occasions. When my brother called a final time, someone told him that on the third attempt to reach us, the ambulance had been shot at and turned back. The doctor examined my father. He had died."
Manal Hafez Sabreh

Reservista da IDF Breaking the silence sobre invasões e ocupações de domicílio de famílias palestinas.
"And then came the instruction: you may cause damage, but you may not steal.
What does that mean?
Because what would happen is that soldiers would simply steal.
What does that mean: “you may cause damage”?
You go in, so as far as the IDF is concerned, you may cause damage, you may cause damage for the sake of the mission. What we would do is, we would shoot couches, causing damage for the sake of the mission.
Could I tip a closet?
For the sake of the mission – yes, to make sure that there’s nothing in the clothes and there’s no one behind it. That I could do, but I was not allowed to steal.
And where does one draw the line?
This is the thing, that sometimes people would do it for fun – shooting television sets, my paratrooper friends would tell me that they would lay on rooftops in Nablus and shoot solar water tanks to see how they’d explode, or people would steal CD players and steal dollars."

 
  
Entrevista de Jon Elmer com Uri Avnery - 5
Elmer: Is Ariel Sharon and his generals' goal to turn so-called Greater Israel, from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan, into a Jewish State?
Avnery: That is their real aim.
It is the aim of Ariel Sharon, and I strongly suspect that the core of whole higher office will follow him on this.
His idea of a Greater Israel - or, as you call it in Hebrew, the entire Eretz (land of) Israel - is from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan, and to turn this into a purely, ethnically clean Jewish state. I would say this is the ultimate objective of all of these people, which would entail, of course, ethnic cleansing [of the Palestinian people].


Reservista da IDF, Forças israelenses de ocupação,
Shovrim Shtika - Breaking the Silence 2
Nablus
 Balata

Documentário: Nablus, la ciudad fantasma - de Alberto Arce, 2004

 

Nablus, Freedom Bus Ride do Teatro da Liberdade de Jenin, setembro de 2012

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