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ICRC blasts West Bank wall as rights violation

An aerial view shows part of Israel's controversial security barrier which separates the Israeli-Arab village Baqaa al-Gharbiya and the Palestinian village of Nazlat Issa in the West Bank on Wednesday. The US and European countries will not speak during hearings next week at the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel's West Bank barrier, the court said. Israel announced last week that it was boycotting the hearings at the ICJ, the UN's highest judiciary body, whose seat is in the Hague. PHOTO: AFP

The International Red Cross assailed Israel's West Bank barrier on Wednesday as a violation of humanitarian law for slashing through land envisaged for a Palestinian state under a US-backed peace plan.

Three US envoys met aides to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on his plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip, also occupied by Israel. The Palestinians proposed international peacekeepers move into Gaza once the Israelis move out.

Sharon says his unilateral strategy aims to defuse conflict with a US-backed peace plan in tatters from persistent violence. But Israel has also kept building the barrier taking in land Palestinians want for a state, raising US concern.

In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the barrier in its current form, winding well inside the West Bank and trapping thousands of Palestinians in enclaves, violated international humanitarian law.

Israel's Geneva ambassador, Yaakov Levy, repeated its position that the barrier was a "self-defense" measure against suicide bombers penetrating the Jewish state, not a new border. Palestinians call it a veiled bid to annex occupied territory.

Sharon planned to pitch unilateral "disengagement" steps to Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, two national security advisers to US President George W. Bush, and State Department official William Burns, in talks running through yesterday. The trio first met Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, on yesterday.

Political sources close to Sharon said he wanted to pave the way to a White House meeting with Bush to obtain his backing for removing around 7,500 settlers from Gaza, which Israel captured along with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.

Calling for Sharon to be toppled, 2,000 settlers protested against uprooting Gaza settlements in a rally to mark the end of a four day 100km march from Gaza to Jerusalem.

"He has gone senile," one settler shouted during the rally.

Political sources said Sharon had also decided to alter parts of the barrier's route at the behest of Washington to remove elongated loops around some West Bank settlements and avoid caging entire Palestinian cities in the future.

"The envoys will try to keep Israel as much as possible on the path of reciprocal steps outlined by the road map, which remains US policy," a diplomatic source said.

The road map requires Israel to stop expanding settlements and Palestinians to rein in militants to facilitate the establishment of a viable Palestinian state next year.

"But the envoys will also want to listen to what Sharon has to say about the unilateral plan given a lot of conflicting reports about what it entails," the diplomat told reporters.

Citing leaks from Sharon's office, Palestinians fear Israel expects to trade in Gaza for permanent control over wide swathes of the West Bank within the course of the barrier where the vast majority of the 230,000 Jewish settlers live.

Israeli political sources said evacuations were unlikely to begin until October or November given many hurdles in Sharon's way, including expected Supreme Court battles by settlers and the need for legislation to compensate and relocate them.
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