Eight years ago today, on July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) published its advisory opinion on the Israel-constructed West Bank barrier separating Israeli and Palestinian territory, ruling it to be "contrary to international law.” The Court then stated that the wall, parts of which are built on Palestinian territory "… severely impedes the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self determination, and is therefore a breach of Israel's obligation to respect that right." The barrier, which follows the Green Line, a line of demarcation agreed to under an armistice and not an actual border, was built for security purposes, Israel claims. This, the ICJ disagreed with, stating that it was not convinced that Israel had chosen to erect the wall for security reasons. Instead it feared that the wall would create a “de facto annexation” of the territory in question. Israel's Supreme Court, has however subsequently accepted security reasons as the motivating factor behind the wall's construction, also in 2004. "Israel has no constitution defining its borders. The wall has to entrench and protect the Israeli settler colonies which themselves are illegal, and so the wall is illegal," says Joseph Schechla, the coordinator of the Cairo-based Housing and Land Rights Network of Habitat International Coalition (HIC). "It's a battle of law-fare," says Schechla, explaining why then, the wall has been allowed to remain, "but then it is the only thing we have, the law. Even then, it is a piece of paper, it's hypothetical unless people claim their right, unless they make sure it is enforced." Despite frequent protests, the wall still stands. Similarly, Morocco has erected a berm, said to be visible from space, separating the occupied territory of the Western Sahara from its liberated territories. The Western Sahara, a resource-rich North African state has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1973. A HIC report deems the berm “imposes a sedentary life on the nomads,” while also employing a divide-and-conquer approach to separate Saharawis (of the Western Sahara) from their families, as well as their land. Originally initiated between 1980 and 1987, the idea of the wall was proposed to King Hassan II of Morocco by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and partially funded by Saudi Arabia. “The security discourse, as in Israel, has sustained influential support from the US and France, in particular, in allowing Morocco's continuous evasion of a referendum on self-determination and international law," the HIC report states. Although the annexation is analogous to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in several ways, the “Wall of Shame” as the Saharawis refer to it – the Israeli barrier has also been referred to in this way, as was the Berlin wall – has not been presented to the International Court of Justice, despite a lengthy and expensive UN mission for a Saharawi referendum for self-determination over the territory. Given Western Sahara's legal status as a non-decolonized territory, its government-in-exile, the Frente Polisario, does not have the mandate to request the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion on the berm, while third-party states and UN bodies are still to initiate the move.
