MSNBC - World Court rules against Israel on barrier

MSNBC reports that the World Court (whose rulings have no binding legal authority, but do have moral and historical weight) has ruled what anyone with a lick of common sense can see: That whatever the purported reason for Israel's "security barrier," the wall has the practical effect of annexing land - it is, for all intents and purposes, an illegal land grab, the court ruled.

The World Court also ruled that the lands Israel has controlled since the 1967 war in which it snatched them are properly described as "occupied" territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel does not recognize Jerusalem as occupied. Here again the court shows common sense - nations are not allowed to expand their borders through warfare, and so Israel's "new" boundaries, which are held against the will of the conquored people, are clearly "occupied."

This is an important decision, since the World Court is the final arbiter of international law. For this court to say so boldly that Israel is transgressing in this manner should cause the Bush administration to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel. Tellingly, the votes on the various paragraphs of the court's ruling were mostly 14-1... the lone dissenter being the American judge.

It's true that America has a good friend in Israel, but good friends need to be corrected when they're in the wrong, just as surely as an enemy does. Ariel Sharon, however, has brilliantly couched his land grabbing in terms that he knows President Bush has already used to describe America's "war on terror." He has painted this barrier as a primary front in that "war," and has parroted Bush in arguing that Israel [America] has the right to take whatever steps are necessary to protect herself from Palestinian [al-Qaida] terrorists. Because Bush has advocated an "anything goes" policy of warfare against whatever he wants to call terrorism at this particular moment [aka, Saddam Hussein], he's hard pressed to do much more than swallow hard and grimace when Ariel Sharon does exactly the same thing - even when American foreign policy would be much better served by a less imperious Israel.

It's a good thing that the World Court has the cojones to do what the Bush administration cannot or will not do. Let's hope the United Nations puts some teeth to the ruling, and that the United States does not, in pompous self service, veto any such UN action.