World Court Condemns Israel Barrier, Says Must Go
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For more articles on this issue click on the following links: US Jews to fight for fence These Arabs fear being branded traitors — and you know what that can mean! — because they find the security fence beneficial A fence of last resort Deserving of Death MR. SHARON, BUILD THIS WALL!

Jul 9, 1:35 PM (ET)

By Emma Thomasson and Paul Gallagher

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Reuters) - The World Court strongly condemned Israel's West Bank barrier Friday, saying it had illegally imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians and should be torn down.

The court said in a nonbinding ruling hailed by Palestinians and rejected by Israel that the barrier violated international humanitarian law. It called on the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly to stop its construction.

But the United States, which has vetoed Security Council resolutions against the Jewish state in the past, dismissed the court's intervention and an American judge on the 15-member panel did not back the ruling.

Israel was forthright in its rejection of the ruling, saying not one Palestinian suicide bomber had managed to slip into the Jewish state wherever the barrier had already been constructed.

"They can say the earth is flat. It won't make it legal, it won't make it true and it won't make it just," Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Britain's Sky television.

The court's head judge, Shi Jiuyong of China, said in the ruling: "The wall ... cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order. (Bob's Note: Notice the HEAD JUDGE IS A COMMUNIST FOR THE "WORLD COURT"? It's the same kind of "justice" they hand out in China; whatever they want whether or not it makes sense or obeys laws. The "World Court" violates the most basic ethical considerations, the sanctity of life and the persuit of peace which Israel has never had since its founding. The PALESTINIAN MOSLEM TERRORISTS still wish to murder ALL Israelis and take over the whole country. I agree with Israel, the first country the Moslems should try to take over should be the Netherlands. It would be easy because the "World Court" would agree with their motives. Palestinians have no historical claim to any land in Israel. They arrived in Israel AFTER they were thrown out of Jordan because they were trying to overthrow the king of that country after WWII.)

"The construction ... constitutes breaches by Israel of its obligations under applicable international humanitarian law. Israel is under an obligation ... to dismantle forthwith the structure," he said.

ISRAEL SAYS BARRIER VITAL

Israel says the barrier is vital to protect its citizens from Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen. Palestinians call the barrier, which curves around Jewish settlements, a land grab that robs them of territory they want for a state.

The court acknowledged Israel's duty to protect its citizens but said it must do so within the law and should compensate Palestinians for homes and land lost or damaged by the building of the 100-yard wide strip of walls, ditches and fences.

The ruling said the route of the planned 370-mile barrier, which is about a third built, "severely impeded" Palestinian rights to self-rule.

"The court considers that the construction of the wall and its associate regime creates a 'fait accompli' on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case ... it would be tantamount to de facto annexation," said the court, the U.N.'s top legal body.

"The court is of the view that the United Nations and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council should consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall."

A senior adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said "as of today Israel should be viewed as an outlaw state."

"The next step is to approach the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council to adopt resolutions that will isolate and punish Israel," said Nabil Abu Rdainah.

Twists and turns of the barrier deviating from the Israel-West Bank boundary have trapped thousands of Palestinians in enclaves cut off from olive and citrus groves, schools, markets, public services and West Bank cities.

WASHINGTON DISMISSES RULING

A spokesman for President Bush brushed aside the ruling, saying the World Court -- formally the International Court of Justice -- was not the right place to settle the issue.

"This is an issue that should be resolved through the process that has been put in place, specifically the road map," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, referring to a stalled U.S.-backed peace plan to end the Middle East conflict.

Palestinians tend to enjoy considerable support at the U.N.

Israel looks to a U.S. veto in the Security Council to block any bid to punish it in the way that apartheid South Africa was after the World Court ruled its occupation of South West Africa, now Namibia, was illegal in 1971.

The U.N. General Assembly requested an opinion on the barrier in December and the World Court held hearings in February overshadowed by public lobbying from both sides.

The case attested to paralysis in Middle East peacemaking after years of violence.

Israel says the barrier has already prevented dozens of suicide bomb attacks. Suicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israelis.

Last week, Israel's top court ordered one segment of the barrier rerouted to avoid cutting off Palestinian villagers from farms, jobs, public services and cities but ruled Israel had a right to build it in the West Bank on security grounds.

"We will abide by the ruling of our own High Court and not the panel in The Hague with judges from the European Union who are not suspected of being particularly disposed toward Israel," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said earlier Friday.

Five of the 15 judges were from the European Union.

© 2002-2004 My Way

US Jews to fight for fence

Jul. 10, 2004
by Melissa Radler

Jewish leaders and Israeli government officials initiated a diplomatic and media blitz Friday aimed at defeating a UN vote calling for the destruction of the security fence.

Launched ahead of the International Court of Justice's 14-1 advisory opinion, issued Friday in The Hague, which stated that a major portion of Israel's fence violates international law and should be torn down, the campaign is aimed at stanching support for a General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel adhere to the ICJ's decision and a possible Security Council text calling for sanctions against the Jewish state.

"This is a very dark day for the International Court of Justice and the international legal system," Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman told reporters at a press conference at UN headquarters in New York. "This is a tragic case where the victims of terror are being put on the dock rather than the terrorists themselves."

Arab nations plan to call a General Assembly session this week to vote on implementing the court's opinion, the Arab League's representative to the UN Yahya Mahmassani said. "We'll ask what the court had decided – Israel has to destroy this wall," Mahmassani told the Associated Press. "It is illegitimate. It's in violation of international law."

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Annan forwarded the opinion to the General Assembly, which, he said, "will determine how to proceed on this matter."

While Israel's UN mission has long deplored the General Assembly's "automatic, anti-Israel majority," the 191-member assembly voted by a relatively small margin last December to send the issue of the fence to the ICJ.

The vote passed 90 to 4 with 74 abstentions – including the world's major democracies.

In addition, four of the Security Council's five permanent members – the US, Britain, France, and Russia – have stated their opposition to the court hearing, sparking hope that any measure put before the 15-member council will face multiple vetoes.
Preparing for the worst, however, Jewish organizations launched a campaign aimed at securing support for Israel's position that the fence is a necessary measure to stop terrorist attacks.

Members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations were mobilized last week to set up meetings with UN missions in New York in an effort to garner support for Israel, said Presidents Conference executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein.

At B'nai B'rith, for example, members in Europe, Latin America, Canada, and Australia began lobbying government representatives on the issue, and chapters in US cities where foreign consulates are located began setting up meetings to press Israel's case, using a series of talking points distributed by Israeli embassies and consulates as a guide.

"The world's democracies had urged the court not to take up the case," the Presidents Conference noted in a statement – one of dozens released by Jewish organizations Friday in response to the court opinion. "Their voice is muted by the majority of dictatorships and totalitarian states, whose representatives make up the majority of the court."

At a press conference held across from the UN Friday afternoon, Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton joined Jewish leaders in condemning the ICJ opinion and urging fellow democracies to respect the Israeli Supreme Court's recent ruling on the fence, which declared it to be a security rather than a political measure. Earlier this year, Schumer and Clinton led a bipartisan effort to gather signatures for a letter to Annan protesting the General Assembly resolution. Seventy-five of the nation's 100 senators signed on to the letter.

"There's only one bit of good news you could say about the International Court of Justice's ruling. It's only advisory and it's not going to make a darn bit of difference," Schumer said. Asked about the fate of the fence, Schumer said, "There is no way the fence is going to come down nor should it. Anyone who cares about saving human life would not let the fence come down."

Calling the ICJ decision "ill-advised," Clinton urged the more than 30 nations who publicly opposed ICJ jurisdiction over the fence to make their voices heard at the UN. "If it does come up for a vote, I hope that the countries which have opposed politicizing the ICJ will stand united, will send a very clear message that a sovereign democracy has the right to protect its citizens," she said.

Whatever the outcome of the General Assembly vote, Jewish leaders and Israeli officials emphasized that the court's decision – and its failure to acknowledge Palestinian terrorism as the reason for the fence's construction – bodes ill for peace in the region.

"We have all learned since 9/11 that none of us are immune, and none of us will be immune from the consequences of this decision if it is allowed to stand," said Hoenlein.

Gillerman noted that while the ICJ referred to humanitarian and human rights law in supporting Palestinian opposition to the fence, it failed to address "the point that the right to life is the highest right."

"The Palestinians who want to stop this fence simply want to kill more Israelis," Gillerman said. "The Israelis who are building this fence simply want to live."

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These Arabs fear being branded traitors — and you know what that can mean! — because they find the security fence beneficial

Jewish World Review
July 13, 2004 / 24 Tamuz, 5764

By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Muslim walks along the Israeli security barrier

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) BAQA AL GHARBIYA, Israel — The 26-foot-high concrete and razor wire barrier down the hill from Najeh Abu Mukh's house cuts him off from relatives and the West Bank.

But the Arab Israeli gas-station worker said he doesn't mind, because the controversial Israeli barrier has done something years of failed peace talks have not: It has taken the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict away from his home.

Like many Arab Israeli citizens who live in northern Israel along the security barrier erected earlier this year, Abu Mukh agrees with the Israeli government that it's beneficial. The Israeli military claims the barrier has cut suicide attacks coming from the now-enclosed northern West Bank by 90 percent.

Abu Mukh questioned the International Court of Justice ruling Friday that condemned it as illegal and inhumane.

"I'm wondering if the judges ever have been here or lived here and understand the real reason for its construction," the 30-year-old asked, relaxing on his front porch with a cup of sweet Arabic coffee. "If not, they should listen and not judge."

Arab Israelis don't readily share this sentiment with outsiders. They fear appearing disloyal to their Palestinian brethren, who live across the line separating Israel from Palestinian territory and hate the structure as much as they despise the government that built it, Arab Israeli journalist Hassan Mawsi explains.

"I'm wondering if the judges ever have been here or lived here and understand the real reason for its construction. If not, they should listen and not judge."

— Israeli Arab Abu Mukh

"Eight of our houses are now cut off from our village and two of them were destroyed so this thing could be built," said Palestinian Riyadh Hussein, 28, gesturing at the security barrier, which he now must walk around to take his three children to nursery school.

But Arab Israelis, like their Jewish counterparts, wanted relief from the suicide bombings and gun attacks that have killed 980 Israeli citizens during the nearly four-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Five of 21 people killed by a suicide bomber at an Arab-and Jewish-owned restaurant last October in Haifa, for example, were Arab Israeli.

Their dilemma was compounded because attackers often crossed into Israel through Arab hamlets such as Baqa al Gharbiya, blending in with hundreds of undocumented workers and clashing with the heavily armed Israeli border guards who tried to ferret them out.

A particularly frightening experience — Abu Mukh and his mother, Hanifa, 71, recounted — occurred in March 2002, when police stopped a suicide attacker's vehicle at a checkpoint in their town. An Israeli policeman and the two Palestinian gunmen in the car were killed in an ensuing shootout.

"All the time Israeli border guards would come here to search for Palestinians who had come illegally," the younger Abu Mukh recalled. "That meant we, too, were repeatedly subjected to identity card checks and questions. I couldn't even go to the store at night without being checked."

There was no such tension evident Friday afternoon in his sleepy neighborhood, where the only sound came from bees and a lone Israeli Humvee that drove along the barrier road.

 

A fence of last resort

By Binyamin Netanyahu
Jewish World Review
July 14, 2004 / 25 Tamuz, 5764

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | While the advisory finding by the International Court of Justice last week that Israel's barrier in the West Bank is illegal may be cheered by the terrorists who would kill Israeli civilians, it does not change the fact that none of the arguments against the security fence have any merit.

First, Israel is not building the fence on territory that under international law can be properly called "Palestinian land." The fence is being built in disputed territories that Israel won in a defensive war in 1967 from a Jordanian occupation that was never recognized by the international community. Israel and the Palestinians both claim ownership of this land. According to Security Council Resolution 242, this dispute is to be resolved by a negotiated peace that provides Israel with secure and recognized boundaries.

Second, the fence is not a permanent political border but a temporary security barrier. A fence can always be moved. Recently, Israel removed 12 miles of the fence to ease Palestinian daily life. And last month, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government to reroute 20 more miles of the fence for that same purpose. In fact, the indefensible line on which many have argued the fence should run — that which existed between Israel and the Arab lands before the 1967 war — is the only line that would have nothing to do with security and everything to do with politics. A line that is genuinely based on security would include as many Jews as possible and as few Palestinians as possible within the fence.

That is precisely what Israel's security fence does. By running into less than 12 percent of the West Bank, the fence will include about 80 percent of Jews and only 1 percent of Palestinians who live within the disputed territories. The fence thus will block attempts by terrorists based in Palestinian cities to reach major Israeli population centers.

Third, despite what some have argued, fences have proven highly effective against terrorism. Of the hundreds of suicide bombings that have taken place in Israel, only one has originated from the Gaza area, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad are headquartered. Why? Because Gaza is surrounded by a security fence. Even though it is not complete, the West Bank security fence has already drastically reduced the number of suicide attacks.

The obstacle to peace is not the fence but Palestinian leaders who, unlike past leaders like Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, have yet to abandon terrorism and the illegitimate goal of destroying Israel. Should Israel reach a compromise with a future Palestinian leadership committed to peace that requires adjustments to the fence, those changes will be made. And if that peace proves genuine and lasting, there will be no reason for a fence at all.

Instead of placing Palestinian terrorists and those who send them on trial, the United Nations-sponsored international court placed the Jewish state in the dock, on the charge that Israel is harming the Palestinians' quality of life. But saving lives is more important than preserving the quality of life. Quality of life is always amenable to improvement. Death is permanent. The Palestinians complain that their children are late to school because of the fence. But too many of our children never get to school — they are blown to pieces by terrorists who pass into Israel where there is still no fence.

In the last four years, Palestinian terrorists have attacked Israel's buses, cafes, discos and pizza shops, murdering 1,000 of our citizens. Despite this unprecedented savagery, the court's 60-page opinion mentions terrorism only twice, and only in citations of Israel's own position on the fence. Because the court's decision makes a mockery of Israel's right to defend itself, the government of Israel will ignore it. Israel will never sacrifice Jewish life on the debased altar of "international justice."

Deserving of Death
International court grants Arabs a right to terror and Israelis a right to die

Jewish World Review
July 14, 2004 / 25 Tamuz, 5764

By Jonathan Tobin

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | On some days, looking at Israel's security barrier close up doesn't give the viewer much of a sense of an international controversy.

Driving around the area covered by the fence near Jerusalem earlier this month on a hot Friday afternoon, I saw little that would have justified the hypocritical condemnations of the world. Even in those sections where the media and protesters have regularly gathered to decry the "apartheid wall," there was quiet and little sign of the dust-up that has attached itself to its creation.

Stripped of those scripted demonstrations by foreigners and canned complaints by local Arabs in those quiet hours before Shabbat, it was possible to see the barrier for what it is and is not. That is something the body in the Hague that calls itself an International Court of Justice was unable or unwilling to do.

Stand near it and look one way, and you can usually see Israel's population centers, where going to a restaurant has become an experience akin to visiting an inner-city jewelry store, where you need to be buzzed in by wary owners. Look the other way and you can often see Arab villages, from whose streets armed gangs and suicide bombers have risen to strike at their Jewish neighbors. Look closely and you'll see most of these villages are not the poverty-stricken stereotypes adored by broadcast television cameras, but bustling towns whose growth has continued despite the self-inflicted collapse of the Palestinian economy.

SIMPLY SITTING DUCKS
But according to the International Court of Justice, Israel has no right to build a defensive barrier. The Palestinians, it seems, have been granted a unique honor in the history of international discourse: They have been accorded an internationally recognized right to commit terrorism. On the other hand, the court has handed the Israelis a distinction that is nothing new to the Jewish people: the right to die.

Ignoring the fact that it was Palestinian terror that built the Israeli fence, the court, acting at the suggestion of the U.N. General Assembly, has issued a ruling that historians will view as yet another indicator of how Jew-hatred was back in style little more than a half century after the Holocaust.

While Israel's right of self-defense was acknowledged, the international court effectively denied Israel the ability to carry out such a defense while also refusing to place the building of the fence in the context of terrorism. But, of course, the intent of this travesty — as with much of the propaganda offensive carried out by the Palestinians and their fellow travelers in the last four years — is not to knock down the fence.

Their goal is much broader: the delegitimization of Israel and Zionism itself. After a decade of failed peace talks and terror, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have had enough. To protect themselves against a Palestinian terror war, they are building a fence whose purpose seems as much to separate the two populations as it is to prevent terrorism.

The international court says the fence should run strictly along the 1949 armistice lines that served as Israel's border until 1967. But the problem with th at argument is that it prejudges the disposition of the territories — to which Israel has as good a legal claim as the Palestinians, a right acknowledged by the statements by both President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that Israel has the right to retain portions of the territories — and would effectively make sitting ducks all of the nearly 400,000 Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, as well as in parts of Jerusalem occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967. That's exactly what Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his troops want.

Those who say that the path of the fence is being dictated by Israel's "expansionist" agenda, instead of security concerns, have it backward. As a number of Israeli sources have told me over the past couple of years, had security and security alone been the only criteria for its route, it would have been built far deeper into the West Bank, with many more Palestinians ending up on the Israeli side so as to enable its route to make more strategic sense.

Instead, even in the fence route criticized by some Israelis as taking in too much land, its boundary is set to minimize the effect on Palestinians and run as close as possible to the areas where the targets of Arab terrorism actually live.

Some Israelis wonder how much help the fence will be in the Jerusalem areas where growing Palestinian villages abut both sides of the barrier. But there's no question that statistics show that completed portions of the fence elsewhere have drastically reduced the number of Arab attacks.

As for the question of the inconvenience and hardship the wall has created for the Palestinians, the answer is simple. Had they not launched a war in September 2000, instead of accepting Israel's offer of peace, no fence would exist. And even then, Israel's own Supreme Court has shown itself willing, as it did two weeks ago, to force the army to reroute the barrier to accommodate Palestinian petitioners.

NOT ROOTED IN REASON
Viewed near or far, the fence is ugly, but how can a reasonable person argue with Israel's right to build it? Opposition to it is rooted not in a quest for peace, but in a desire for Israel's eradication.

The question isn't whether Israelis will quiver in the face of new international calumny or even further efforts by Arafat's forces to kill Jews, such as last weekend's bombing in Tel Aviv. They won't. Its people have coped with the trauma of terror, and have, for the most part, not allowed the Palestinians to disrupt their lives. The streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem remain full; so are some of the restaurants and hotels, as long-absent tourists have started to return this summer as the intifada has fizzled out in yet another defeat for the Palestinians.

But the real question in the aftermath of the latest outrages from the United Nations and its kangaroo court is for us in the United States. Ironically, some in this country are now urging a greater reliance on the United Nations and the European Union, in spite of the fact that these institutions are closely identified with the deligitimization of Israel that the court ruling represents. The decision on the fence ought to remind us of the dangers of being pulled along with what passes for international opinion.

When global bodies enshrine Jew-hatred in law, as this court has done, decent persons everywhere should tremble.

MR. SHARON, BUILD THIS WALL!

Jewish World Review
July 14, 2004 / 25 Tamuz, 5764

Dick Morris

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | As the Cold War waned, President Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and defiantly turned to the Soviet Union and said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Now, we should turn toward Israel and say, despite the recent decision of the International Court, "Mr. Sharon, build this wall!"

The contrast with Berlin is striking: Nikita Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall to keep people in; Israel has built its fence to keep terrorists out.

The 480-mile security fence is being erected by Israel to keep out Palestinian terrorists who have killed almost 1,000 civilians since their campaign of suicide/homicide bombings began. To put the Israeli losses in perspective with their small population, that death toll is the equivalent of 50,000 dead in the United States — slightly fewer than we lost in the entire Vietnam War.

The fence has succeeded brilliantly. No Israeli has been killed in a terrorist attack in an area where the fence has been completed in all of 2004 and terrorist attacks are down substantially from the rate of previous years.

Now the International Court of Justice, dismissing Israeli security concerns, has ruled that Israel violated international law in routing the fence over Palestinian property.

The fact is that a multilateral peace in the Middle East is clearly impossible. At the end of his tenure, President Bill Clinton negotiated a treaty with very generous terms only to watch it be rejected by Yasser Arafat and the PLO delegation. It is fanciful to believe that the cessation of a few miles of territory to an independent Palestinian state is going to prevent suicide bombings and other acts of terror by deranged fanatics.

Nor is it realistic to expect to deter suicide bombers by threatening to kill them. Unilateral Israel military action, occupying Palestinian territory and rooting around for terrorists, just antagonizes the world and does little to protect Israel or deter attacks.

A fence, which I have urged for years, is the best — and only — way to protect Israel. It is a unilateral way to make peace.

The ICJ ruling, which is nonbinding, came after the Israeli High Court ruled that the government must reroute part of the fence around Jerusalem to reduce the hardship to the Palestinian population.

But if the route and location of the fence causes economic dislocation to the Palestinian community and makes a contiguous political state harder to achieve, that is just too damn bad. For decades, Israel has been willing to negotiate acceptable terms with the Palestinian authorities — only to see each agreement destroyed by their inability to control their terrorist-inclined extremists.

Israel had to stanch the bleeding caused by the massive terror attacks of 2002 and 2003 — raids that amounted to the Holocaust on the installment plan. It was by only taking matters into its own hands and making terror raids physically impossible that Israel have been able to protect its own citizens and make military raids into the West Bank less necessary.

This wall, combined with a program of targeted strikes against terrorist leaders, has proven highly effective and must not be reversed.

The Israeli action also holds important lessons for the United States. In effect, Israel is saying that neither negotiation nor military raids can destroy the Palestinian terror organization. But technology, by putting Israeli civilians out of reach, can do so.

In our deployments in Iraq, we should heed the Israeli example and take care to insulate our forces from as much hostile action as possible, realizing that those the terrorists cannot reach, they cannot kill.

 

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is the author of, most recently, "Rewriting History", a rebuttal of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) memoir, Living History. (ClickHERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.

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