Israel's construction of its West Bank barrier went ahead full force yesterday, hours after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the structure to be torn down in compliance with a world court ruling.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said it was "unfortunate" that Israel was ignoring the nonbinding ruling handed down earlier this month by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, as well as Tuesday's UN resolution.
"I hope that the international community will continue to exert every effort to make Israel comply with the UN resolutions," Erekat said.
PHOTO: AFP
Bulldozers worked yesterday in Abu Dis, a Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem.
Workers raised 8m-high concrete walls that are rapidly separating the Palestinian area from Jerusalem, a city which Abu Dis is highly dependent on for employment and other services.
The 150-6 vote late Tuesday, with 10 abstentions, reflected the widespread international opposition to the 685km barrier, which Israel says is needed to protect its citizens from suicide bombings.
The UN resolution, like the world court's advisory opinion, is not legally binding. Both have symbolic value as international statements of support for the barrier's destruction.
But Israel has over the years defied, ignored and brushed off UN resolutions, including ones calling for it to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel's Supreme Court -- in a ruling meant to apply to the entire structure -- has found that the barrier violates international law and human rights in areas where it cuts Palestinians off from their lands, schools and other towns.
The ruling has forced the government to reroute nearly the entire portion of the unbuilt barrier. Officials said most of the structure would be moved closer to the so-called Green Line, the unofficial frontier before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yesterday ordered an investigation into the shooting of a key critic of his unrelenting grip on power as Palestinian officials warned of dire consequences for law and order in their territory.
Nabil Amr, a lawmaker seriously wounded by a sniper's bullets, issued a plea for calm and hinted that someone was trying to silence him.
A sniper shot Amr in the West Bank city of Ramallah late Tuesday. An advocate of reforms for years, Amr had increased his criticism of Arafat in recent days as the leader refused to relax his control over security forces.
Also see story:
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS