Date: 09 / 07 / 2009 Time: 09:40
Israel's seperation wall
[Ma'anImages]
Bethlehem - Badil - Today marks the fifth anniversary of the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) advisory opinion on the legality of the 724 km wall that Israel continues to construct across the West Bank.
The ICJ's ruling was clear and unambiguous: the wall's construction is illegal; Israel must terminate construction immediately, dismantle the sections already built and return confiscated properties; and Palestinians affected by the construction must be compensated.
The court further stated that all states are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from its construction or to render aid or assistance maintaining the situation created by such construction.
The ICJ ruling should have been a victory for the forces demanding respect for and implementation of international law. Instead it has become a symbol of Israel's disrespect for international law and of the international community's failure to hold Israel accountable to its crimes; despite the devastating consequences such impunity has upon the lives of Palestinians who continue to be displaced from their homeland.
The wall has definitively created six ghettos throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories containing 98 enclaves with 312,810 Palestinians surrounded by barbed wire, walls and control towers. At least 14,364 persons have been displaced in the 145 localities through which the wall passes with some 90,000 Palestinians directly threatened by displacement as the Wall's construction is completed.
Without recourse to an adequate non-partisan mechanism to implement the ICJ ruling, Palestinians are left with few options to defend their rights and to resist displacement. While weekly grassroots protests continue in villages like Bil'in, Ni'lin, and Ma'asara whose lands continue to be robbed, they have so far lacked the sufficient leverage to resist Israel's sheer military might and the accompanying impunity provided Israel by the international community.
In this context, there is no substitute to advancing the broad, international civil society struggle to boycott, divest and sanction Israel as called for by Palestinian civil society since 2005. Such a campaign has the moral authority and power to counter balance the forces supporting Israeli apartheid. Those who pay taxes to governments that support Israel; those who handle Israeli products whether as vendors or consumers; and those who engage in international academic, cultural and sports fora that normalize Israel's regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid - all have within their hands the power to stop the machine that makes Israeli apartheid politically viable and materially profitable.
***The above was a statement on the fifth anniversary of the ICJ Decision from Badil resource center in Bethlehem, Palestine
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