MIDDLE EAST: Israeli politicians, relatives of people killed in suicide bombings, and parts of the Hebrew-language media castigated the International Court of Justice in The Hague yesterday for so much as considering the notion that Israel's West Bank security barrier might be illegal.
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, in stark contrast, condemned the barrier as "an apartheid wall" that was transforming Palestinian towns and villages into "isolated ghettos", and thousands of West Bank Palestinians held protests against it.
Israel insists that the barrier is a last-resort protection against Palestinian suicide bombers, the most recent of whom crossed into Jerusalem via a gap in the barrier from Bethlehem on Sunday and killed eight Israelis on a commuter bus.
Officials at the Palestinian Authority, which had initially opposed the barrier on any route, now say their principal criticism relates to its construction on West Bank territory, and that by routing it deep inside the West Bank in some areas, Israel is engaged in a land grab. As each side attempted to win the propaganda battle that is accompanying the hearings in The Hague, Israel yesterday moved the twisted skeleton of the No 14 bus blown up on Sunday to a section of barrier-wall cutting through East Jerusalem's Abu Dis neighbourhood, and several Israelis bereaved by suicide bombings gathered there with photographs of the victims and recited the Jewish mourning prayer. Overseas camera crews filming this scene, however, were quickly distracted when a rally by hundreds of Palestinians on the other side of the concrete degenerated into clashes with Israeli troops, who used tear gas and stun-grenades to disperse the crowd.
Mr Alan Baker, the legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, justified what other Israeli jurists have described as Israel's "gamble" in boycotting The Hague hearings by arguing that the Palestinians' "real aim has been to try to get Israel in the dock of the International Court of Justice, to stand there and point at Israel and say you are an outlaw state".
And in one of the day's most pointed denunciations of the hearings, the former Israeli prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, fumed that the victims were in the dock, rather than "the killers and their dispatchers.We shouldn't be in The Hague on trial. It's the Palestinian terror regime and terrorist organisations that should be there," he said.
In similar vein, the tabloid Ma'ariv noted on its front page: "Jerusalem: 8 murdered in a bombing. The Hague: Israel in the dock. You be the judges."
But Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei insisted that what he called "the racist separation fence" could only breed discontent, and would not yield security for Israel.
Addressing hundreds of Palestinians at the rally near his home in Abu Dis, Mr Korei declared that if Israel wanted peace "the path is clear. And if they want violence, the path is clear".
The Palestinian Authority cancelled school after a first "lesson" about the barrier, and encouraged demonstrations across the West Bank .