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:
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS