On the eve of a hearing in the International Court of Justice on its separation wall, Israel has begun to remove an eight-kilometer section of the 700-kilometer barrier in the West Bank. Some see this as a desperate attempt by Tel Aviv to defend the indefensible — and in the face of huge odds. Others believe that Israel has never cared what the international community thinks and is merely moving the wall because it now includes on the Israeli side an Arab village that it would prefer outside — and with it the threat of resistance from that village.
The international community has already given its verdict. In September, the UN issued a report that condemned the barrier as illegal and tantamount to “an unlawful act of annexation.” The General Assembly has demanded that Israel halt construction of the barrier and dismantle what has been built, while UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the barrier was counterproductive to the road map to Mideast peace. And a report to the UN Commission on Human Rights warned that about 210,000 Palestinians living in the area between the wall and Israel would be cut off from social services, schools and places of work, “which is likely to lead to a new generation of refugees or internally displaced people.”
An International Committee of the Red Cross report was no less forthcoming, saying the barrier violated international humanitarian law in the places where it veers into Palestinian territory.
Short of a UN Security Council resolution, which will not come as long as the US has the veto in that body, that is a powerful condemnation of the wall, and a powerful endorsement of the Palestinians’ case in the World Court. It is therefore all the more devastating that a suicide bomber from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade has chosen yesterday to blow himself up on a crowded bus and take at least seven innocent people with him.
This senseless bombing may not affect how we feel about the justice of the Palestinian cause — though elsewhere it may cause sympathizers to lose heart and their protests to lose momentum. But it will certainly reinforce the determination of the Israelis to come down as hard as humanly possible on the occupied territories. The wall is a concrete symbol of the ghetto mentality that now prevails in Israel; 75 percent of Israelis are said to support it. Now Israel will want to dig in even deeper. That means little from the point of view of an Israeli in Haifa, in Tel Aviv, who already feels besieged by enemies on all sides. But it will make the lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories even harder. There will be more incursions, more aggression.
The Palestinian case in the World Court is strong. It could have lent powerful support to a new round of negotiations. That now seems further away than ever.
