UN condemns West Bank wall

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UN condemns West Bank wall


The Israel Government sees no alternative to the barrier
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Israel halt the construction of a security barrier in the West Bank.
The resolution also calls for existing stretches of fence to be removed.

It says the barrier contravenes international law, but falls short of meeting Arab-led demands that the entire matter be referred to the International Court of Justice in the Hague for a legal ruling.

The BBC UN correspondent says the resolution sends a clear message to Israel.


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OK So What if Israel doesn't obey them? :bounce:

The US permits them occasionally in much the same way that corporations hold "quality circles," which have been shown to be a very effective way to allow employees to feel that they are listened to without affecting actual policies or practices.

Israel is currently in violation of 69 binding resolutions of the security council.

The US no longer permits security resolutions that either are or could be interpreted as critical of Israel or any action of the Israeli armed forces against civilians, or the Israeli government.

They'd be in clear violation of U.N. decisions. That seems to be among the criteria for U.S. unilateral warfare. We'd have to, wouldn't we? Israel would be laughing in the face of the U.N. I'm sure plans for the attack are already being formulated. :eyes:

It is, in practical fact, an annexation by force of land, and an utter disenfranchisement of the persons dwelling or working upon that land. Regulations being promulgated for Arab Palestinians between this barrier and the Green Line differ little from the old military authority visited on the Arab population after the '48 war, and after several years of enforcement, may be relied on to have a similar, even a worse effect. Not only will there be confiscations of "absentee" property, where this absentee-ism is the result of these very regulations, and the fire-sale liquidation of crippled enterprises, and confiscations for purposes of "security", but the persons affected by this reincarnation of the earlier practice will not even be citizens, with some recourse to courts, and some political rights. They are being forcibly converted to resident aliens under purely military jurisdiction, that will make their ordinary routines of life so onerous as to impell them to depart. This sort of thing is specifically recognized as ethnic cleansing by all legal authorities: it was, indeed, the early face of Butcher Slobo's campaign in the eighties in Kossovo.

Persons who cling to the idea that sometime in future this wall will come down in a negotiated peace and all this then will be put right are deluding themselves. In several years, legal ownership of the land will have changed, and the people largely departed. That is every bit as much the purpose of this construction as security for the population of Israel. Indeed, to both enclose and embitter a population within a security zone runs rather counter to ordinary conceptions of what such a barrier is meant to achieve: these people, after all, will already be within the barrier, and it can hardly check their activities against the state of Israel, should they choose to engage in any. And if they do, these will only serve as a pretext for more iron-fisted military activity, that will, at best, only hasten their departure.

A security construction along the actual border of Israel, the de facto border accepted on its admitance to the United Nations, would be one thing. It could be readily justified as a legitimate measure, and might actually bring some practical benefit. This is something else, and a damned ugly something else indeed.

:bounce:

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Israel vows to go on with fence, despite UN condemnation

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies



Israel vowed on Wednesday to press on with building
a vast barrier in the West Bank despite a U.N.
resolution condemning the project as a violation
of international law and demanding it be halted.




"The fence will continue being
built and we will go on
taking care of the security
of Israel's citizens," Deputy
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
told Israel Radio,
reiterating the Jewish
state's stance that the
barrier is needed to block
Palestinian suicide bombers.


Palestinians oppose the network of fences and
concrete barricades, planned to eventually loop
around settlements, as a land grab that
prejudges borders that should be negotiated.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed
the resolution late on Tuesday. The vote was
carried 144-4, with 12 abstentions, with
Israel's key ally the United States voting
against the measure. Micronesia and the
Marchall Islands also voted against.

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:bounce: