The ruling issued by the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the separation barrier Israel is constructing in the occupied West Bank affirms the reality of what is taking place in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is a conflict between an occupier and an occupied. The Palestinians are fighting to end a 37 year-long military occupation.

The matrix of concrete walls and coils of barbed wire that the Court ruled is “illegal” and must be dismantled is illegal because Israel is constructing it on occupied lands. The court rejected Israel’s argument, which was presented in an affidavit to the court, that these territories cannot be considered “occupied territories”. The route of the barrier has less to do with “security considerations” and more with what this occupation has always been about: brazen colonialism.

At the end of the day, the Israeli government could not get away with the argument that it is obliged to, as Henry Seigman laconically noted: “steal more Palestinian land to protect Israelis living on previously stolen Palestinian land.”

The Court’s ruling noted the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, which are home to over 370,000 Jewish settlers. The Israeli government has repeatedly pledged to hold on to the largest settlement blocs in the West Bank, which house 80% of the settlers, in the event of any peace treaty with the Palestinians. These are the “realities on the ground”, these settlements that were established for Jewish use only on confiscated Palestinian lands, that George Bush famously said must remain, a statement that the Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry repeated.

The court rejected the Israel’s argument that the route of the barrier was based is based on “security considerations.” It was the settlers, and their patrons in the Israeli government and the military, who dictated the route of the barrier.

The court dismissed Israel’s argument that the Palestinians had brought the barrier onto themselves. The Israeli argument invoked the principle: “maxim nullus commodum capere potest de injuria sua propria” (no one can take advantage of his wrong doing). The Court’s decision noted that it convened at the request of the General Assembly, not the Palestinians.

But it upheld the maxim against Israel’s separation barrier. The suffering the barrier has caused for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, cutting them off from their lands, enclosing then in open air prisons and requiring them to posses special permits to reside in their own lands cannot be justified as a necessary defence.

The Palestinian revolt against the occupation will soon enter its fifth year. The Israeli military has set up hundreds of checkpoints on every road leading in and out of every Palestinian city and town. Palestinians regularly spend days on end under curfew, and months under closure. Demonstrators have been killed indiscriminately, as in the notorious attack in May 2004 when an Israeli tank fired a shell in the midst of a demonstration in Rafah, killing seven unarmed demonstrators. At the time, George Bush remarked: “Israel has defended itself with skill and heroism.”

After every breach of international law, Israel has claimed the right of self-defence. As with the checkpoints, the curfews and the closures, the barrier is not about security. It is intended to “sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people”, as the IDF’s Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon described the strategy of the army he commands.

Israel is waging a campaign for its settlements in the West Bank, which have continuously expanded since the first settlement was established in September 1967, three months after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza. This is Israel’s last “frontier war”, its last attempt to ‘round out’ its borders. But instead of a stake, it is planting an entire complex of walls, trenches and fences.

The Court dealt specifically with the separation barrier, as it was mandated by the General Assembly. But it did rehearse a number of truths: the Palestinians are under a military occupation, and Israel is denying them self-determination.

This barrier is only one egregious aspect of this systematic denial of Palestinian self-determination. In response to the Court’s decision, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is insisting that the barrier is no “wall”, but for the most part “a chain link fence.” Would that Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Defence Minister in 1967, be alive today to hear this. Soon after the IDF conquered the West Bank and Gaza, Dayan recommended that the Palestinians be told “you shall continue to live like dogs.”

Today, the Israeli government can find nothing better than the claim that its barrier is merely “a chain link fence”, as if the West Bank were a kennel for two million dogs. If the truth were to be told, a Palestinian living under the occupation today is not defined as a human by the military administration that rules the territories. Humans have rights; essential, non-negotiable rights, which are all enshrined in the declarations and protocols Israel has signed. No human has to be told that her rights will come once the Palestinians “are a defeated people”, and are willing to ‘negotiate’ their surrender.

The Court’s ruling was not only an indictment of the separation barrier, nor just Israel’s colonies and military occupation. It concluded with the ruling that every country that is party to the Fourth Geneva Convention must “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.” This encouragement that Israel is receiving from the governments of the US and Canada, as well as the other governments that will refuse to respect the the Court’s ruling, is criminal.

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