JERUSALEM, 22 July 2004 — Israel vowed yesterday to press ahead with construction of its West Bank wall despite a UN resolution demanding that it be torn down, but Palestinians called for international sanctions to force compliance. “Building of the fence will go on,” Raanan Gissin, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told Reuters hours after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to press Israel to obey a world court ruling declaring the wall illegal.
“The resolution adopted by the UN is aimed at depriving us of this security shield without offering us an alternative way of protecting ourselves against terrorism,” said Dore Gold, another senior adviser to Sharon. “We have every right to defend ourselves and are determined to construct this fence,” Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations, told AFP.
President Moshe Katsav also insisted that “the security fence is helping to prevent bloodshed and is aiding moderate Palestinian leaders.” Israel calls the project a bulwark against Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians condemn it as an apartheid wall that takes away land they want for a future independent state.
Gissin said Israel was not surprised by the nonbinding UN decision, calling it a “tyranny of the majority” in the General Assembly, where sentiment often runs against the Jewish state. The vote was 150 in favor of the Palestinian-sponsored resolution to six against, including Israel’s main ally, the United States, and 10 abstentions. All 25 European Union voted in favor of the measure — a move which one senior Israeli official called disappointing.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, an aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, hailed the General Assembly’s decision as a “victory for the Palestinian people” and called for sanctions to enforce it. “The UN Security Council must now take steps to implement the General Assembly’s decision to remove the wall,” he said. Negotiations minister Saeb Erekat said it was time that the international community stopped allowing Israel to act as “a state above the law”.
“It (the UN resolution) confirms the illegal nature of the Israeli occupation and annuls all the measures in the Palestinian occupied territories, including east Jerusalem,” he told AFP. “The decision is a major victory for Palestinian diplomacy and the Palestinian people as well as Arab diplomacy.”
Surveying the diplomatic damage, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations denounced what he called the “disgraceful support” of the EU nations, singling out France for particular criticism. “France behaved in a particularly disgraceful fashion by acting for its Palestinian friends and convincing the other European countries to adopt this resolution,” Dan Gillerman told public radio.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry called into question the ability of the European Union — one of the four sponsors of the troubled road map peace plan — to play an impartial role in the peace process. “This raises the question of whether the European Union is able to positively contribute to the political process,” a statement said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit echoed the Palestinian call for action, urging the United Nations and the international community to “bear their responsibility”. The resolution, like the world court ruling, is not legally binding but carries symbolic weight. Only the 15-nation Security Council can take action against Israel, but as a permanent member, the United States would be certain to veto it.
The world court ruled earlier this month that construction of the 600-km (370-mile) wall, which is about a third built and cuts into West Bank land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War, violated international humanitarian law.
But Israel, backed by the United States, flatly rejected the ruling by the UN’s highest tribunal. “Israel will not stop building (the wall) or abdicate its inalienable right to self-defense,” Gissin said yesterday. But he reaffirmed the government’s intention to reroute the wall in line with a recent Israeli High Court order to minimize hardships to Palestinians.
The UN resolution demanded Israel comply with the world court finding it was legally obliged to dismantle the wall and pay reparations for damages caused during construction.
But under a concession to the EU after intense negotiations, the measure also condemned all acts of terrorism and urged both Israel and the Palestinians to meet obligations under the US-backed “road map” to peace, now stalled by violence.
Australia, which voted against the measure, said it backed Israel’s construction of the wall but that the structure should not cross into occupied territories. “Israel must find ways of defending itself against terrorists,” Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in Canberra.
