MIDDLE EAST: Condemning "criminal Palestinian terrorists" for killing an Israeli woman soldier and injuring dozens of Israelis civilians in a bombing in Tel Aviv yesterday, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the attack underlined the need for Israel to complete its West Bank security barrier, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
Two days after the International Court of Justice in The Hague branded the barrier illegal and called on Israel to demolish it, Mr Sharon ordered that its construction continue and said Israel would fight the decision by "all diplomatic and legal means."
In the most bitter official Israeli response to date to the ICJ's advisory ruling, the Israeli Finance Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, essentially accused the court, 14 of whose judges backed the ruling with only the American judge dissenting, of exposing Israel's Jews to a potential second Holocaust.
"Sixty years ago in Europe," Mr Netanyahu wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily, "six million Jews were slaughtered, in the absence of a power that would protect them from barbaric murderers.
"Today, again on European soil," he went on, "the international court of the UN has ruled that Israel has no right to defend its citizens against barbaric murderers who aim to slaughter another six million Jews."
While the court was concerned about Palestinian children being late for school because of the barrier, many Israeli children didn't reach school at all, he said, "because they are blown up en route on the buses by Palestinian terrorists, who cross (into Israel) in places where the fence hasn't yet been built."
The Palestinian Authority, which has hailed the ICJ's 60-page ruling as an important victory, is now tabling a draft resolution affirming the court's decision for a vote in the UN General Assembly, possibly as soon as Thursday.
The resolution is certain to gain a large majority, but Israel hopes many western nations may vote against, or abstain.
Kofi Annan, the UN's Secretary-General, yesterday urged Israel to respect the court's decision, noting: "Whilst we all accept the government of Israel has a responsibility, and indeed the duty, to protect its citizens, any action it takes has to be in conformity with international law."
While moving the issue to the General Assembly, Palestinian Authority ministers, who met yesterday in Ramallah, said they had decided not to press for a vote in the UN Security Council, which has the power to order sanctions against Israel, until after the US presidential elections.
"We decided that it was not wise now to go to the Security Council because we don't want to incite the Americans, especially during the election campaign," said one PA minister.
The US, one of many western nations which had argued that the ICJ should not rule on what they deemed a political rather than a legal matter, has indicated that it would veto any operative decision by the Security Council.
Yesterday's Tel Aviv bombing shattered a four-month lull in fatal attacks inside sovereign Israel. In an attack claimed by the Al-Aqsa Brigades, who claim loyalty to the PA President Yasser Arafat, a bomb was placed in bushes at a bus stop and detonated alongside a commuter bus in the morning rush hour.
The PA Prime Minister Ahmed Korei condemned the attack. Mr Arafat, however, asserted that Israel had itself carried out the blast, to undermine the ICJ ruling.
Speaking soon after the bombing, Mr Sharon described it as the first act of murder carried out "under the auspices of the opinion of the International Court of Justice." The court, he said, had ignored "murderous Palestinian terrorism" and dealt only with "the Israeli response, the construction of the fence.
"But what the ICJ judges refused to see, the Palestinians quickly showed them this morning - murder and the wounding of innocent civilians. It is not for nothing that the Palestinians are struggling against the fence," he said. "They know full well that the completion of the fence will make it very difficult for them to continue perpetrating acts of murder." About 120 miles of the barrier - a little over a quarter of its complete projected length - have been built so far.
Most Israeli legal analysts and commentators have castigated the ICJ ruling, in particular for its minimal reference to Palestinian attacks and for the legal reasoning invoked by the court to deny Israel access to a self-defence argument. However, several commentators also blamed Mr Sharon for routing parts of the fence deep into West Bank territory, in what the PA has characterized as a land-grab.
"The fence was as vital to Israel's security as air to the lungs, but it should have been routed along the Green Line (the pre-1967 Israel-West Bank border)," wrote the leading commentator Nahum Barnea.
"That way it could have been built quickly, without legal delays and without diplomatic damage."
America's support was saving Israel from sanctions for now, he added. But Israel was becoming a pariah state - "not yet apartheid South Africa, but certainly from the same family."