Israel Defiant About Barrier

JERUSALEM — The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reacted defiantly Tuesday to a U.N. General Assembly vote asking the International Court of Justice to rule on the legality of a barrier that Israel is building around the West Bank.

Meanwhile, domestic criticism of the fence mounted, with one Israeli commentator saying construction of the barrier, which cuts tens of thousands of Palestinians off from family and livelihoods, could turn Israel into a “leper state.” The United States, which voted against the United Nations measure, urged Israel to reconsider the route of the barrier, which would expropriate about 14% of the West Bank, according to the U.N.

U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer told Israel Radio that the Bush administration is sympathetic to Israel’s position that the barrier is a necessary defense against suicide bombers. But he suggested that it carves off far too large a chunk of Palestinian territory to be acceptable.

“There’s a very strong understanding in Washington of why the fence is being built, and we don’t have an argument with that,” Kurtzer said. “But we do have a view ... about the route of the fence, and frankly, the closer it is to the Green Line, the less you will hear from Washington with respect to the fence.”

The Green Line is the pre-1967 cease-fire line, from when Jordan controlled the West Bank, and Palestinians hope it will demarcate the boundary of their future state. They say Israel’s building of a barrier that substantially deviates from that line amounts to a land grab prejudicing the outcome of territorial negotiations.

Authorities at the International Court of Justice in The Hague said issuing a formal legal opinion on the barrier -- which would not be binding -- could take months.

Sharon came under sharp criticism from leftist members of parliament regarding the fence. At a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the prime minister brushed aside objections to its route and instead spoke of the possibility that Israel would make unilateral territorial concessions to the Palestinians.

“I don’t believe a word you say,” Yossi Sarid of the dovish Meretz Party told Sharon, according to an official present at the closed-door session. “You have burdened us with this terrible fence.... It’s a crime.”

Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister and a lawmaker with the opposition Labor Party, said Israel was paying too great a price for its insistence on the route. “When the fence starts protruding into the West Bank, and we and the Palestinian public increasingly rub against one another, it’s clear we are exposing ourselves to international criticism and diplomatic damage,” Sneh said.

Only eight countries, including the United States, voted against the U.N. measure seeking the court’s opinion; 74 abstained and 90 were in favor.

Uzi Dayan, a former general who heads an Israeli governmental body overseeing construction of the barrier, defended it, saying, “It isn’t a wall which separates two peoples who want democracy; it’s a wall which separates terrorists from the people they want to murder.”

Senior Israeli officials labeled as hypocritical the international objections to the barrier, of which the U.N. vote Monday was only the latest.

“It’s a classic piece of moral relativism,” said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. who is a senior advisor to Sharon. “What the U.N. did was condemn Israel without even a nod toward the need to fight the terror that has killed so many Israeli civilians.”

But commentator Ben Caspit, writing in the mass-circulation daily Maariv, said, “Instead of imposing a siege on the Palestinians and on terror, the fence imposes a siege on us.

“Israel is becoming, slowly but surely, a leper state.”