Palestinian Authority Set to Resort to Int'l Court of Justice over Israel's Apartheid Wall

News, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

International Aid Donors Issue Final Warning to Israeli Government

29/11/2003

Palestine Media Center – PMC

The Palestine National Authority (PNA) is set to resort to International Court of Justice after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report on Friday that Israel has failed to comply with a General Assembly demand that it halt construction of its Apartheid Wall. Meanwhile world aid donors issued a final warning to the Israeli government that they may halt activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip unless Israel eases the restrictions they impose on Palestinian population.

Annan’s official report lays the groundwork for the Palestinians to return to the 191-nation General Assembly to seek further action against Israel, probably next week.

Palestinian UN envoy Nasser al-Kidwa vowed that if Israel failed to comply, he would ask the assembly to adopt a second resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on whether the barrier was illegal.

The court, a branch of the United Nations, judges disputes among countries and is based in the Netherlands.

US diplomats and some European Union states oppose bringing the UN court into the dispute, arguing this could further politicize the Middle East peace process and prejudge issues better left to later negotiations.

Washington, Israel's closest ally, cut nearly $290 million this week from a nine-dollar package of loan guarantees after President George W. Bush said the Jewish state should not prejudice peace talks with "walls and fences."

But Israeli officials brushed off the gesture as symbolic.

The United States previously vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have declared the Wall illegal.

But Annan’s report said building the wall at a time the Israelis and Palestinians are being asked to follow the "roadmap" peace plan could be seen only as "a deeply counterproductive act," Reuters reported.

"In the midst of the road map process, when each party should be making good-faith confidence-building gestures, the barrier's construction in the West Bank cannot, in this regard, be seen as anything but a deeply counterproductive act," Annan said.

"I have concluded that Israel is not in compliance with the assembly's demand that it 'stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,"' said the report, requested by the assembly in an October 21 resolution.

By building what Israel calls a "security fence" that veers eastward as much as 13 miles from its 1967 border with the West Bank would violate international law and increase Palestinian suffering, he said.

Annan's report said the Wall would cut off 16.6 percent of West Bank land, home to 17,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and 220,000 in East Jerusalem. "If the full route is completed, another 160,000 Palestinians will live in enclaves, areas where the barrier almost completely encircles communities and tracts of land."

Under Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) orders, Palestinians living between the Wall and the 1967 border must obtain special permits to remain in their homes while illegal Israeli settlers can move freely in and out of those areas.

It also "could damage the longer-term prospects for peace by making the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult," his report concluded.

The General Assembly voted 144-4 with 12 abstentions last month to adopt a resolution demanding that Israel halt construction of the Wall. Only the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia voted "no."

Donors Warn Israeli Government

Separately International aid donors have issued a final warning to the Israeli government that they may halt activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip unless Israel eases the restrictions they impose on the occupied Palestinian territories.

The donors raised their concerns Wednesday with Silvan Shalom, Israeli foreign minister, ahead of a donor conference in Rome on December 10. The meeting on Wednesday included representatives of the World Bank, IMF, United Nations, Norway, Russia, Canada and Japan.

Donor officials said they had decided against an immediate suspension of aid activities, partly to avoid influencing current peace moves and also because ordinary Palestinians would be the first to suffer. Israel, however, also has an interest in the continuation of foreign aid to the Palestinians, as it would otherwise have to provide services for those under occupation.

The donors said provision of humanitarian aid was becoming "unmanageable" as a result of tighter security measures in recent months.

But the donor warning underlined frustration at failure to win improvements on the ground, where aid workers have encountered delays, obstruction and occasional abuse.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said Mr Shalom had acknowledged a need to alleviate the situation in the territories. A spokesman for the Israeli Co-ordinator's office, which liaises with the international donors, accepted that monitoring of foreign nationals, including aid workers, had been tightened since two British citizens traveled from Gaza to bomb a Tel Aviv bar in April.

"We know that the donor community is having a difficult time implementing projects and we are doing our best to ease their movement," the spokesman said.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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