The streets of Holland became a lively ground of
demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, as people came
from all over the world to express their opinions about
Israel and its separation fence.
On Monday the International Court of Justice began its
hearings on Israel's security barrier. Some 2,500 Israel
supporters from across Europe, Israel and the United States
joined hands in their rally for Israel. Later, the same
square was the site of a slightly smaller pro-Palestinian
demonstration.
For the most part, Dutch police managed to keep the two
groups apart, but the police's efforts did not temper
demonstrators' vehemence toward each other, and for their
cause.
Pro-Israeli demonstrators spoke of Israel's need for a
security barrier in the face of Palestinian terrorism.
Demonstrators from Israel led by Zaka brought with them an
Israeli bus mangled in the Jan. 29 Jerusalem suicide bombing,
in which 11 people were killed, just around the corner from
the Israeli prime minister's official residence.
Demonstrators said a hush fell over the crowd when the
flatbed truck bearing the shattered bus rolled in.
To emphasize the point, 10 members of Zaka, the chareidi
rescue and recovery service that collects victims' body parts
after terrorist attacks in Israel, stood around the bus in
their yellow work suits.
Iris Boker, director of Zaka in Europe, said the bus had such
a strong effect that it would probably be sent to other
demonstrations rather than returned to Israel. She said there
were several requests from U.S. groups to use the bus.
Miri Avitan came to the demonstration at The Hague with a
photo of her son Assaf, who was killed at his 15th birthday
party in a suicide bombing in December 2001. Bridgit
Kessler's daughter, Gila, was killed in a suicide bombing on
June 19, 2002.
Around noon, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters began
assembling, many bearing Palestinian flags, signs calling for
the "end of occupation" and pictures of Palestinians killed
during the current intifadah. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of
the Israeli Knesset who is close to Yasser Arafat, spoke at
the Palestinian demonstration.
Marie-Jose Van Overveld-Roosendaal, a Dutch woman who came to
the pro-Palestinian demonstration, said her mother had
rescued a Jewish woman during the Holocaust and was honored
with a tree at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.
Nevertheless, Overveld-Roosendaal said she is so angry at
Israel that she wants to uproot the tree and replant it in
"Palestine."
The United States and Israel did not attend the court
hearing. The United States said the international court was
not the right forum to decide a political issue, and Israel
said it would not attend because it does not the recognize
the court's jurisdiction in the matter.
On Monday, testimony against the fence came from the
Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Nasser Al-
Kidwa, and several other Palestinian lawyers who spoke,
uninterrupted, for some three hours; South Africa's deputy
foreign minister; and representatives from Algeria, Saudi
Arabia and Bangladesh, among others.
Outside, some pro-Israel demonstrators said that while they
did not support construction of Israel's security barrier,
they wanted to draw attention to the reason for it:
terrorism. The president of B'nai B'rith International was
there, as was U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). Wexler was
joined by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). Both are members of the
U.S. House International Relations Committee.
Chabot said, "The people who ought to be on trial today are
the people who are training children to aspire to be suicide
bombers, not people who build fences to protect innocent
lives."
Alan Sermonetta, 37, came to The Hague with a group of about
100 Jews from Rome. A contingent of students from Yeshiva
University in New York carried a large banner. About 40 Jews
came from Posnan, Poland.
Christians for Israel held their own pro-Israel march.
The Palestinian argument was that the security fence imperils
the road map and destroys any hope of peace or an independent
Palestinian state. It said that the wall is illegal and
violates international humanitarian law.
Palestinian Authority envoy to the UN Nasser al-Kidwa said,
"The wall is not about security. It is about entrenching the
occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of
Palestinian land." He condemned suicide bombings, but blamed
Israel for the violence, explaining that it is the result the
of "occupation."
Observers noted that security barriers exist in Cyprus
between the Greeks and the Turks and between India and
Pakistan. The US has a security barrier on its Mexican
border.
International lawyer James Crawford defended the court's
right to hear the case. In so doing, he brought legal
arguments written to the court by Israel and others disputing
that right into the oral proceedings.
"The wall is an attempt by Israel to impose a unilateral
settlement in relation to a multilateral conflict and to do
so in violation of fundamental obligations. These relate to
humanitarian law and human rights, including self-
determination. The people of Palestine have an unfulfilled
right to self-determination.
He added that the "wall is inconsistent with the road map,
and the wall, if allowed to be completed, will destroy the
road map."
In Jerusalem, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a
sharp message to the court.
"It is not the killers and their dispatchers who are put on
trial, it is the victims. We shouldn't be in The Hague on
trial. It's the Palestinian terror regime and terrorist
organizations that should be there. That's the right order of
things," he said.
Netanyahu said he had a message for those sitting on the
court. "You have no right to serve as the moral conscience of
the Jewish people. We have our own conscience. Now our
conscience tells us that saving our own lives is more
important than preserving somebody else's quality of life.
Quality of life is always amenable to improvement. Death is
permanent," he said.
He said Israel is working to save the lives of Jewish people.
"However, respected judges in Europe are claiming that the
Jewish state has no right to defend itself from
murderers."
The second of three days of hearings at the International
Court of Justice in The Hague on the legality of the
separation fence inside Palestinian territory, will be taken
up with arguments from Belize, Cuba, Indonesia, and Jordan in
the morning, and from Madagascar, Malaysia and Senegal in the
afternoon.
The Palestinians are saying inside the court and out that
they have no objections to Israel building a fence on the
Green Line or on Israeli territory.
A statement issued by Israel charged that the December 8
General Assembly resolution "reflects the gravest prejudice
and imbalance." The resolution requested the court's opinion
about a nonviolent measure designed to prevent terrorist
attacks, but made no mention of the suicide bombings which
led Israel to build the barrier in the first place, it
argued, calling this a "travesty."
The General Assembly, Israel argued, can only request an
opinion from the ICJ if the Security Council failed to act,
which was not the case, because the Council had endorsed the
road map less than three weeks before the Assembly resolution
was passed.
