Palestinians are urged, rightly, to trade terrorism for non-violence. When they do, as in turning to the International Court of Justice regarding Ariel Sharon's wall in the West Bank and Jerusalem, they are told that the ruling means nothing.
Israel says the court is irrelevant, and the White House adds: "We do not believe that that's the appropriate forum to resolve what is a political issue." Canada says the same thing.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Sharon, says the World Court's historic ruling "is not a legal event; it's a political event."
The conundrum that follows is this: The issue must be tackled politically but the court's ruling must be ignored because it is political.
There are other obfuscations and distortions.
Senator Hilary Clinton says the wall/fence/barrier is Israel's "non-violent response" to Palestinian suicide bombings. It is. So is the Palestinian decision to turn to the court in The Hague as well as the courts in Israel. But such a balanced view is not allowed to intrude on our one-sided narrative.
The wall is needed for Israeli security. The wall works. Suicide bombings are down to about zero. Which is why most Israelis support it. But that is not what the World Court ruled on, contrary to the impression created.
It acknowledged that Israel faces "numerous indiscriminate and deadly acts of violence" and has "the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens."
Rather, the court ruled on the illegality of much of the fence encroaching into Palestinian land to wrap around many Jewish settlements.
The third of the fence already built led to the appropriation of Palestinian land, the ripping out of tens of thousands of olive groves, and the encircling of thousands of Palestinians into enclaves, cutting them off from schools, agricultural lands and workplaces Ñ that, said the court, is against international law, on three counts.
*The wall impedes the liberty of movement of Palestinians, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
*It impedes "the right to work, to health, education and to an adequate standard of living," in violation of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
*It "contributes to demographic changes," in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
Israel, therefore, must "cease forthwith the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around Jerusalem." Israel must "return the land, orchards, olive groves and other immovable property seized," and, where too late, pay compensation.
We may disagree. But let's not pretend that the World Court is telling Israel not to protect itself.
The court also rejected the argument that the barrier is temporary. It sided with the Palestinians that it is de facto annexation of land.
The vote was 14 to 1, the lone dissenter being the American representative. It's America and Israel vs. the rest of the world, yet again.
Lost in all the arguments is the fact that the court's judgment echoes two rulings by Israel's own Supreme Court, ordering a freeze on one section of the wall and the rerouting of another.
Of the wall's impact on Palestinians northwest of Jerusalem, the Israeli judges said it "would separate landowners from tens of thousands of dunams (quarter acres) of land ... and would generally burden the entire way of life in petitioners' villages."
The fence caused Palestinians hardship in "a severe and acute way," "severely violated" their freedom of movement and "severely impaired" their livelihood.
The major difference between the World Court and the Israeli court is that the latter approves expropriating Palestinian land for the sake of Israeli security, so long as that does not cause undue hardship to Palestinians.
Sharon is adjusting the wall's route in deference to the Israeli court. But he is mocking the World Court. He is doing so for the same reason that he ignores and vilifies the United Nations.
Palestinians must cower to Israeli dictates. That is the centrality of this debate. The rest is spin, dutifully repeated by many North American commentators and editorialists.
None of this excuses the stupidities of Yasser Arafat and the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority under him, leading to lawlessness and gang rule.
This is what U.N. special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in a report to the Security Council Tuesday. That Sharon helped undermine the Authority, as Roed-Larsen also notes, does not derogate from the blame Arafat deserves.
The only sign of possible relief in this dreary political landscape is the coming Likud-Labour coalition. Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, has a better vision of how to come to terms with the Arabs. As a start, he will help push Sharon's proposed pullout from the Gaza Strip.
He understands, as Sharon does not seem to, that "there is no security without law," as the three Israeli court judges said.
There's none without justice either, as Bishop Desmond Tutu said in an interview Tuesday.
In Toronto to deliver a eulogy for Bishop Ted Scott of the Anglican Church of Canada who fought against apartheid, Tutu said of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute:
"No matter how powerful one side is, there will never be true security. That's what we learned in South Africa. You will never get true security from the barrel of a gun. As long as we are able to humiliate, subdue and bully the other side, so long will we remain without security." ------------------------------------------------------
