On July 9, 2004 the International Court of Justice gave a much disputed ruling on the legality of the Israeli security barrier. The opinion is 140 pages long and gives a thorough account of the testimonies and letters submitted to the International Court of Law on this issue.
The assumption of the court is that Israel has no legal claim on Judea and Samaria, and that consequently Israel occupies that territory because there are Israeli towns, police and soldiers there, including in East Jerusalem and Hebron. It decided that since, in the court’s opinion, Israel had no claim to Judea or Samaria, a barrier separating the Jewish population from the Arab population in those areas was illegal, even though the boundary between Israel and Jordan was legally established by treaty to be the Jordan River.
The court is saying that the Non-Israeli Arab political forces in Judea and Samaria have a greater claim to that area than do Israeli Jews. Otherwise it could be as easily said that Arabs are occupying that territory as Israel, since both Jews and Arabs have lived in Judea and Samaria since before the establishment of the State of Israel, and the majority of both populations immigrated there during the first half of the 19th centuries, during the time of the British mandate. Likewise both sides control various areas with their military forces. The court does not explain why it is legal for a coalition of Arab political forces to control Judea and Samaria militarily, and for the Arab population to exand their towns, but illegal for Jews to live in those areas or expand their towns, or for Israel to build a barrier between the populations. Building barriers between conflicting populations and along borders where there are frequent problems has been done by many nations throughout the world and throughout history, and has never been disputed in the International Court of Justice until various Islamic plaintiffs demanded that the court rule on the legality of Israel’s barrier.
For these and other reasons this ruling has been dismissed by those supporting Israel (and Israel itself, of course) as being a foregone conclusion based on politics and not a real attempt at fact finding or justice. Others maintain that the ruling having been made, it should be respected as international law, regardless of whether the parties consider the ruling to be just or not.
As there is no court of appeals for rulings from the International Court of Justice, and the court does not have the power to enforce its rulings. In a practical sense each party is left to simply reject or accept the ruling and proceed according to its decision. The UN Security Council would have the option of employing the UN armies to try and force Israel to take down the barrier, but this is very unlikely, as UN forces have proved to be very ineffective in other locations where they have been tested. Likewise the UN Security Council has the option of employing military force to try and stop the Arab political coalitions from launching terrorist and military attacks against Israel, but would not.
The Court’s ruling has been hotly debated since it came out 3 1/2 years ago. For those who have scruples that they should read a document before they cite it, or for those who otherwise have a desire for facts, the ruling is available for download here, as a PDF.
