A Fair Price for Security?

There are a number of errors in the presentation by Peter Philipp. Perhaps his first is his failure to tell his readers the purpose of the security barrier. It is to protect the citizens of Israel from Palestinian suicide-bombers who kill indiscriminately. The second error is to talk about Palestinian 'soil'. The soil which is spoken about is the historical land of Israel. There has never been a Palestinian Arab state in this land. There have been and are Arabs who live in this land. The land which is involved and is called by the world ' The West Bank' is in fact the heartland of Biblical Israel. The third error concerns the nature of the Court. They are like Mr. Phillip totally unsympathetic to Israeli losses of life. Their one-sidedness and basic unfairness is a priori. Everyone knew what the ruling would be beforehand. -- Shalom Freedman

Israel's barrier is a prelude to its annexation of what is left of Palestine. The barrier is a test issue Israel is using to see how far it can go in usurping Palestinian lands. So far, the World Court, world opinion, and basic decency and humanity have not prevented Israel from its continuing domination of the Palestinians. The barrier is one of many atrocities that Israelis have waged on Palestinians including: using Palestinian citizens as shields in combat zones, destroying houses deemed "dangerous," forcing most Palestinians to live in refugee camps, abusing women, children, and the elderly at border crossings, etc.
Internally, Israel is recognized in its abuse of its own Arab-Israeli citizens where Jewish neighbors refuse even to speak to their fellow Arab citizens next door. If Israel is a model democracy for the rest of the Middle East, heaven help us... -- Roger Geertz Gonzalez, USA

It is heartening to see a decision in favor of the Palestinians regarding the Israeli "Apartheid Wall" on Palestinian land. I can only hope now, that when the issue of Israel's rejection of the court's ruling is raised in the United Nations, that America's veto will not be used in the same tediously predictable fashion. The willingness of the US to use their veto to shield Israel, whilst they flagrantly flout international law, would be a joke if it were not quite so tragic for the Palestinian people. The right to a veto should be balanced against the sensible use of such a right. It is time also for the government of my own country to swallow their fear of offending the sensibilities of Bush & co, and to condemn Israeli atrocities with the readiness that they condemn the acts of the Palestinian "terrorists". -- Howard

The world community should be prepared to boycott Israel with the harshest sanctions if it does not remove the wall from Palestinian territory and end the illegal expropriation of Palestinian land. -- Larry Saltzman

The international community has shown anti-Israeli bias and hatred over so many years that it does not have any moral or legal basis to judge Israel's actions. -- Jed