VARIOUS: LEAKED DOCUMENT SAYS THAT WORLD COURT WILL RULE ISRAEL'S WEST BANK BARRIER ILLEGAL BUT PALESTINIANS SAY IT WONT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE
Record ID:
400905
VARIOUS: LEAKED DOCUMENT SAYS THAT WORLD COURT WILL RULE ISRAEL'S WEST BANK BARRIER ILLEGAL BUT PALESTINIANS SAY IT WONT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE
- Title: VARIOUS: LEAKED DOCUMENT SAYS THAT WORLD COURT WILL RULE ISRAEL'S WEST BANK BARRIER ILLEGAL BUT PALESTINIANS SAY IT WONT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE
- Date: 9th July 2004
- Summary: (W3) JERUSALEM (JULY 9, 2004) (REUTERS) 1. WOMAN WITH SHOPPING WALKING ALONG STREET. WALL RUNS ALONG THE MIDDLE OF ABU DIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, ON THE FRINGES OF EAST JERUSALEM 0.07 2. PALESTINIANS CLIMBING THROUGH A HOLE IN THE WALL. THIS IS ONE OF THEIR LAST ACCESSES INTO WEST JERUSALEM (2 SHOTS) 0.23 3. (SOUNDBITE)(English) UNIDENTIFIED PALES
- Embargoed: 24th July 2004 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: KIBBUTZ GIVAN BRENER AND NETANYA, ISRAEL/RAMALLAH, ABU DIS, MAS'HA VILLAGE AND A-RAM, WEST BANK/ JERUSALEM/ ABOVE ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK
- City:
- Country: Palestinian Territories
- Reuters ID: LVAALJ4I4GRJ38C9YVFAK7UUAZJ4
- Story Text: Leaked document shows World Court rules Israel's
barrier illegal but Palestinians say it won't make any
difference.
The president of the International Court of Justice
started reading a ruling on the legality of Israel's West
Bank barrier on Friday (July 9) in a case that could prompt
calls for sanctions against Israel.
Judge Shi Jiuyong of China called the U.N.'s highest
legal authority to order and started reading the
non-binding advisory opinion requested by the U.N. General
Assembly that is expected to be highly complex and possibly
take several hours to read.
But the ruling was leaked several hours before the
start of the reading and revealed that the court would
decide that the barrier violates international law.
The European Commission had also said about two hours
before the start of the World Court ruling at 1300gmt
appeared to confirm the European Union's view that Israel's
West Bank security barrier was illegal. The body has urged
the Israelis to remove it from occupied land.
And the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the Hague
court would rule that Israel's West Bank barrier, which has
imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians, violates
international law and should be torn down.
The ruling is expected at around 1300gmt.
The newspaper quoted documents that it said it had
obtained on the decision saying the court will declare that
the barrier infringed the rights of Palestinian
inhabitants. It says it will rule that the wall
"constitutes breaches by Israel of its various obligations
under the applicable international humanitarian law and
human rights instruments".
In Abu Dis, in the Jerusalem neighbourhood,
Palestinians said whatever the ruling, it would make little
difference to their lives because Israel was unlikely to
take any notice.
Israel has already said it will not accept the ruling
which is expected to be among the most watched in the 58
years of the World Court based in The Hague -- a case that
has underlined the paralysis of Middle East peacemaking
after years of violence.
"What they (the Israelis) want to do, they do and they
don't care what court decide and what whoever decide. I
think whatever they see they have to do and continue to do,
they do it. And the court can give decisions from far away
and they don't come to see how they are doing," said one
Palestinian man after he clambered over the fence.
Palestinians brand the barrier a precursor to annexing
territory since its charted route often diverges from the
boundary with Israel well into the West Bank to take in
Jewish settlements on land captured in the 1967 Middle East
war.
One Palestinian man said the barrier simply violated
his rights as a human being.
"We would just like to live like a human being, we
don't want anything else," he said.
Last week Israel's top court ordered one segment of the
barrier re-routed 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
groun
ds.
Hours before the ruling, Palestinian Labour Minister,
Ghassan al Khatib was slightly more hopeful than the people
he represents. He said although a ruling against Israel
would not unpick the wall at least it would be a first step
towards voting on a United Nations resolution against it.
"We hope that after the positive resolution at the High
Court of Justice, the Palestinian side, together with our
friends whom are the vast majority of the international
community are going to go to the United Nations in order to
take a resolution that should be binding to Israel and
hopefully the outcome will be a victory to international
law and a defeat to the Israeli occupation," Khatib said.
Israel is concerned that a World Court thumbs-down to
the barrier would spur a push for sanctions against it by
the U.N. General Assembly, where pro-Palestinian feeling is
strong.
It is looking to the veto power of key ally the United
States in the U.N. Security Council to block any
Palestinian-driven bid to punish the Jewish state as
apartheid South Africa was after the World Court ruled its
occupation of Namibia illegal in 1971.
The government says the network of fences, ditches and
walls, a third of which -- 200 km (120 miles) -- have been
built, has already served its stated purpose by thwarting
infiltrations by suicide bombers who have killed hundreds
of Israelis.
One Israeli woman in Netanya agrees and says it has
worked.
"And we feel more insecurity. And it's the same in
Jerusalem. Its the same here and I think it will be better.
Better to keep the front, between," she said.
Up to 30 people were killed in Netanya's Park Hotel in
a suicide bomb attack two years ago. Hotel manager Claude
Cohen says the wall has been erected for security reasons
and not to create apartheid.
"I don't see how a wall could disturb anyone. If that
were the case, there would be thousands of walls to knock
down. A wall is a protection wall. It is so as not to have
attacks in buses, where children and civilians die. If we
are against this form of protection, it means one is for
terrorism. And if that's the case, we are told that we
can't defend ourselves. Or, one is against terrorism and
then in that case it is a good thing to defend oneself,"
Cohen said.
But according to the leaked copy of the ruling
obtained by Reuters, the Court calls for the swathe of
fences and walls to be torn down because it infringes the
rights of Palestinian inhabitants who have been trapped in
enclaves by sections that take in Jewish settlements on
occupied territory.
It says that the court was not convinced that the
specific course Israel has chosen for the wall was
necessary to attain its security objectives nor that the
construction of the wall, along the route chosen, was the
only means to safeguard the interests of Israel against the
peril which it has invoked as justification for that
construction.
It then says that Israel has to face numerous
indiscriminate and deadly acts of violence against its
civilian population. It has the right, and indeed the duty,
to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens.
The measures taken are bound nonetheless to remain in
conformity with applicable international law.
The ruling demands that Israel inmmediately cease
building the remainder of the wall in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, including in and around East
Jerusalem and that it begin dismantling those parts of the
barrier which are within the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem.
CORRECT SCRIPT AND SHOTLIST TO FOLLOW SHORTLY
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