UN votes 90:8 to send fence to Hague
The United Nations General Assembly voted Monday to request that the International Court of Justice deliberate on whether Israel is legally obligated to halt construction of the security fence.
Ninety voted for the motion, eight against, including the United States, Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Uganda and the Pacific islands Naui and Palau. Seventy-four abstained, including the members of the European Union.
EU Ambassador to Israel Giancarlo Chevallard defended the abstentions, saying that European states could not vote against the proposal in order to maintain open channels with those states that support the idea, and that the European vote would regardless be unlikely to affect the inevitable outcome.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel will, should the need arise, present its case before the IJC and argue that the fence is a legal barrier designed to protect lives.
This is "the fence that Arafat built," UN ambassador Dan Gillerman said Monday. "Arafat built the fence, and his terror initiated it and made the fence inevitable. If there were no Arafat, there would be no need for a fence," he said.
He also attacked the world body itself, saying, "We don't think that it is up to the United Nations or any other international body to determine the legal aspect of this measure," adding that none of Israel's neighbors "have an independent legal system comparable to ours."
The IJC's opinion would not be binding, said Ruth Lapidoth, a professor of international law at Hebrew University. "It is an advisory opinion," she said. "It is only a question of public relations." Such cases usually take between 4 and 15 months, she said.
The Palestinian UN observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, started pushing for the resolution after Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a November 28 report declaring that Israel had failed to comply with a General Assembly demand to halt construction of the fence, which juts into the West Bank.
Earlier Monday, Shinui called for a vote to change the security fence's route. If the fence were closer to the Green Line, the party argued, it would be "more of a security fence and less of a political fence."
