Monday, July 12, 2004

ICJ Ruling on the Israeli Fence

After much searching, I finally found the ICJ ruling on the Israeli fence. The National Review gives a brief synopsis about why the ruling is simply absurd. However, this quote particularly struck me:
The Court considers that the military exigencies contemplated by these texts [the 4th Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Regulations] may be invoked in occupied territories even after the general close of the military operations that led to their occupation. However, on the material before it, the Court is not convinced that the destructions carried out contrary to the prohibition in Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention were rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

What exactly would convince them of the "absolute necessity" of Israel's military situation? Maybe a couple 100 more suicide bombings will have them come to their senses.
(A link to the whole opinion can be found here
A side note: Am I the only one amused to hear that the opinion in the case was written by a Chinese Justice? Because its not like the Chinese have ever experimented with putting up a big wall to keep out invaders and barbarians.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just laughed for like 2 minutes on this post. I couldn't agree with you more - though I found it no coincidence that the Court ruled what the US probably would have - we need allies somewhere.

~Carole

David Schraub said...

Jack,
A suicide bomber IS a barbarian and I couldn't care less if they are Palestinean, Saudi, Tamil, or Martian. If Osama Bin Laden wants to look for signs of western oppression of Arabs, he can find plenty of examples (albeit mostly flawed ones)in the US and Europe without playing on Israel. While the wall is an inconvienance (and there are specifics about it I don't particularly like), Palestineans cannot claim a harm from an entity they brought upon themselves. Since there has been no cessation of hostilities from the Palestinean side, the region in question can legitimately be described as a combat zone, with all that entails. In reality, there are much worse things that Israel could be doing to Palestine than building a big wall (like declaring war), the security fence if anything seems like a relatively benign response to Palestinean terror.