Amira Howeidy on what it is like when Israel is in the dock Is Israel in the dock, as some in the Arab world insist? Certainly it would seem so, given the intense three-day long oral hearings taking place at The Hague-based International Court of Justice -- the highest judicial organ of the UN -- on the legal consequences of Israel's separation wall being built on occupied Palestinian land. "This is an unprecedented event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict," says Salah Amer, professor of international law and legal advisor to the Arab League's delegation to the ICJ . Despite official Palestinian criticism of the last- minute withdrawal of Arab states -- including Egypt -- scheduled to support the Palestinian position by contributing to the oral hearings, the Palestinians breathed a sigh of relief as a series of "remarkable" presentations were made before the court's 15 judges, and the world's media which was transmitting the sessions live on air. The case is viewed by many as one of the most important, and the most watched, in the court's 58 year old history. Eleven countries, in addition to the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, presented evidence at the oral hearings that concluded yesterday afternoon. Forty-four countries, including Israel and the US, submitted written statements to the court. Tel Aviv's opposition to the principle of a "security matter" being reviewed by the ICJ encouraged a number of other countries to follow the same course and snub the oral hearings. Israel, however, presented a written affidavit arguing that contrary to established facts on the ground, the West Bank and Gaza strip are "disputed areas" and not occupied Palestinian territories. Israel's main argument, though, is centred on its conviction that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over the wall. Over the past three days dozens of luminaries and heavyweights from the rarefied world of international law, including James Crawford (University of Cambridge), Georges Abi-Saab (former judge on the International Criminal Tribunal examining crimes in the former Yugoslavia, representing Palestine, and Monique Chemillier-Gendreau (Paris University) representing the OIC, have refuted Israel's affidavit. But more importantly, they repeatedly exposed Israeli policies against the Palestinian population, its glaring attempts to grab land and its systematic violation of international and humanitarian law. "This is an act of genocide," cried Cuba's representative to the court on Tuesday. Israel's boycott of the court and its focus on a PR campaign that included bringing the remains of a burned-out bus from a suicide operation in Jerusalem to The Hague, appears to have backfired. Even Fatah's Al-Aqsa Brigades suicide operation in East Jerusalem on the eve of the trial, which many Palestinians feared would lead to support for Israel's construction of the wall, did not appear to impact on deliberations of precisely who is violating international law. After completion the wall will be 730km long. Some 90 per cent of its course deviates from Israel's 1967 borders, unilaterally redrawing and expanding those borders. The wall cuts deep into the West Bank, isolating Palestinian communities into cantons, enclaves and "military zones." The Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including almost 1.5 million refugees, will be contained on only 12 per cent of historic Palestine. Despite Israel's intensive PR campaign to make the wall palatable to the world, the most abiding images have been of the Berlin Wall and of apartheid South Africa's policy of cantonisation. A date for the issue of the Court's advisory opinion has yet to be announced. "Deliberations could last weeks or months," PLO legal advisor Michael Tarazi told Al-Ahram Weekly. The UN asked the Court for an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the wall last December. Although any opinion issued by the ICJ is unbinding its political implications are likely to leave Tel Aviv feeling uncomfortable. Chemillier-Gendreau, counsel for the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference, said suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel cannot be viewed in a vacuum. "They have to be linked to the far more bloody terror exercised by Israel against the Palestinians since its founding." The Arab League's chief counsel, Michael Bothe, told the Court yesterday that "the wall does not stand between terrorists and potential victims, but between the farmer and his land ... the child and his school, patient and doctor and families who want to unite and the faithful from his or her holy places." It is an affront to international law, he argued. The EU, which abstained from the UN's General Assembly's vote last December to refer the wall to the ICJ, and which has been widely criticised for the hypocrisy of its position, spoke out against the wall this week. On Tuesday the President of the European Parliament Pat Cox warned that "the separation fence is inching further into the territory of the West Bank, in such a degree that the cantonisation of Palestinian territory begins to raise question about the viability of a Palestinian state." Such pronouncements appear to have led the Israeli media to question the wisdom of the Israeli government's decision to boycott The Hague hearings and leave the "floor to the Arabs". Tuesday's edition of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried an editorial that described Palestine's media campaign as having been as successful as that conducted by Israel. Tel Aviv, it argued, had received a "legal hard blow" by not appearing at The Hague. Israeli demonstrations in the Netherlands will be forgotten, said the paper, but not so the hearings inside the Peace Palace.
