Israel Barrier Feud Goes to Court

Israelis and Palestinians brought their arguments over Israel’s controversial barricade in the West Bank onto neutral ground Monday, using a legal hearing to win support in the court of world opinion.

Legal debate over the barrier took place inside the Peace Palace, where the International Court of Justice meets. Outside the courtroom, grisly images of violence -- from the blasted shell of an Israeli bus to photos of Palestinian children’s bullet-torn bodies -- competed for sympathy on the streets of this placid European capital.

The world court’s hearing was a trigger for violent demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where thousands of Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli troops -- and dodged tear gas or rubber-coated bullets in return -- during a day of coordinated marches.

They were responding to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s call to “make your voices heard.”

“There cannot be peace and security between the two peoples, or in the whole region, as long as this racial segregation wall is being built,” Arafat said.

In The Hague, Palestinian lawyers argued that Israel’s 452-mile barricade of wire, military patrol paths and concrete tower blocks cutting through Palestinian land was a “wall,” the foundation of a permanent border.

They said its construction amounted to an Israeli land grab that would make it impossible to patch together an eventual Palestinian state.

“Israel is continuously attempting to change the status, physical character, nature and demographic composition of that territory, most recently through the construction of the wall,” Nasser Kidwa, head of the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. and an architect of the legal challenge, told the 15 judges in his opening remarks. “Israel cannot once again be permitted to continue its ceaseless taking of Palestinian property and rights.”

The Palestinians are hoping that the United Nations’ judicial body will heed a request from the General Assembly to deliver a nonbinding “advisory opinion” on the barrier’s “legal consequences in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

The Israeli government contends that the court has no business offering an opinion on something as vague as “legal consequences.”

Its lawyers complain that the process does not refer to Palestinian “acts of terrorism” that make the barrier necessary. They are building a defensive “fence,” the Israelis say, that can be removed should the suicide attacks end.

The Israelis weren’t making that argument in court Monday, however. Ignoring several prominent voices inside Israel calling for the government to argue its case in The Hague, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the world court had no jurisdiction over a matter of national security -- although Israel did submit a legal brief outlining its objections.

The U.S. and most European countries, which have reservations about the barrier but want the matter settled by diplomats, not judges, also submitted written arguments.

The Israeli government opted to counter the Palestinian legal thrust with an appeal for consideration of their suffering.

Israelis whose relatives have been killed in Palestinian attacks gathered with several hundred sympathizers from across Europe outside the Peace Palace. Many carried photographs of dead loved ones and chanted, “Put Palestinian terror on trial.”

“The decision of the court is not important; what’s important is the war on public opinion,” said Gideon Meir, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman who traveled to The Hague. “We decided we wanted to speak from the heart, speak from the gut, to send the world a message that we are the victims of terror.”

Outside the court, an Israeli rescue group displayed on a flatbed truck the skeleton of a Jerusalem city bus blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The bus was destroyed Jan. 29 in an attack that killed 11 people. Among them was Yechezkel Goldberg, whose sister Carrie Devorah traveled from Washington to defend the barrier.

“We’re looking at sick people doing sick things,” she said, standing in front of the bus. “I’ve got friends who live in gated communities in Malibu that keep the bad people out and the good people safer, and this wall is about safety and security too.”

The official Palestinian position does not object to the Israelis building a barricade, only to the route the existing one runs. Kidwa told the court that Israelis could build a wall “and raise it to 80 meters [262 feet] rather than 8 meters [26 feet] if it wished,” provided it stuck to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Some Europeans demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinians argue that erecting any barrier is a wrong decision. “This wall is a crime against humanity,” said Gretta Duisenberg, the wife of former European Central Bank Chairman Wim Duisenberg who caused a stir last year when she hung a Palestinian flag from her apartment. “Even if it was built on the ’67 borders, I am still against it.”

Many observers are unsure the court can craft a ruling that would satisfy Arab nations that want the barrier condemned and the West, which wants the matter left to diplomats.

“The law isn’t applied in a political vacuum,” says Phillipe Sands, a British legal expert who has pleaded several cases before the world court. “It will have to look to the interests of the U.N. as a whole, and it may just find that it is stuck between a rock and hard place.”

Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem contributed to this report.