Law vs. Lives

In a recent article, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times wrote the following about Israel’s security fence:

Israel started building the barrier in 2002 with the intent of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities. Consisting mostly of wire fence but also, in parts, of high concrete walls, much of the barrier, which is about 57 percent complete, has been constructed on land east of the 1967 boundary, inside the West Bank, leading Palestinians to characterize it as a land grab.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion describing the routing of the barrier inside the West Bank as a violation of Israeli obligations under international law.

Israel’s Supreme Court, in response to petitions, has ordered several sections of the barrier route to be moved closer to the 1967 line, but most of the alterations have not yet been carried out.

There are several important things to note about these paragraphs.

Nowhere does Kershner write that since the fence has been built terror against Israel has decreased.
She mentions the ICJ’s ruling but doesn’t explain that the ruling is political not legal.
Even the Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t ignore the security issues involved.

When the Israeli High Court of Justice (or Supreme Court) ruled on the route of the fence in 2004, it wrote:

56. From a military standpoint, there is a dispute between experts regarding the route that will realize the security objective. As we have noted, this places a heavy burden on petitioners who ask that we prefer the opinion of the experts of the Council for Peace and Security over the approach of the military commander. The petitioners have not carried this burden. We cannot – as those who are not experts in military affairs – determine whether military considerations justify laying the Separation Fence north of Jebel Mukatam (as per the stance of the military commander) or whether there is no need for the Separation Fence to include it (as per the stance of petitioners’ and the Council for Peace and Security).

Still it concluded:

60. Our answer is that there relationship between the injury to the local inhabitants and the security benefit from the construction of the Separation Fence along the route, as determined by the military commander, is not proportionate. The route disrupts the delicate balance between the obligation of the military commander to preserve security and his obligation to provide for the needs of the local inhabitants.

Understand what’s going on here. The court admitted that it could not determine whose security credentials to trust: Whether to trust those then currently in the military or the partisan ex-officers. In the end, it ruled that the security question was moot, but determined that the damage caused by the fence was too great to justify any lessening security that might result from rerouting the fence.

Israel’s high court didn’t ignore the security issues it just ruled that they were irrelevant.

Now contrast that report with that about another recent court ruling.

On Sunday night, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected a petition from an organization of terror victims, Almagor, against the release.

Among those freed Monday were two men whom Israel says have “blood on their hands,” meaning they had been convicted in attacks that harmed Israelis. Said al-Atabeh, 57, who had been in custody since 1977, was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner.

Now Almagor had empirical evidence that prisoner releases were dangerous. Nadav Shragai recently provided the details of how released prisoners end up committing more terror.

I have no idea about the nature of Almagor’s petition. But if they provided proof that many of the terrorists freed in previous releases had indeed returned to terror and the court rejected that petition, then it showed once again that it deems the security of Israel’s citizens unimportant. It has demonstrated that inconveniencing Palestinians is worse than risking Israeli lives.

The media as demonstrated by the NY Times’s reporting also shows that their concern for the very real risks taken and negative rewards reaped by Israel is less important than that a process not leading to peace takes place. And, of course, Israel’s judicial system’s concern for Palestinian inconveniences at the expense of Israeli lives is met with Durban II.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.