Newshost:
Hello and welcome to this BBC News Interactive forum, I’m Mike Wooldridge. Leaked reports say the International Court of Justice in the Hague will rule that Israel's West Bank barrier is illegal and should be removed. The court is currently delivering its decision as we’re on air. Israel says it's putting the barrier in place to protect its citizens from gun attacks and suicide bombers. The Palestinians say it's unlawful. When finished, the barrier will stretch for more than four hundred miles.

So will the court’s expected decision have any effect? You’ve sent in many questions for our guest, Middle East specialist at Cambridge University, Professor George Joffe. Professor welcome and three questions to start that are really all in a similar vein.

A B Edinburgh, Scotland: Given that Israel is in breach of more UN directives than any other country in the world, but nothing ever happens, do you think they will even care about the ruling of the court?

Paul Wesbroom, Maidstone, Kent: How many international court rulings have to go against Israel before anyone actually does something practical?

Jim, UK: I think the legality or illegality of the Israeli barrier is unimportant, the real question is does it achieve a worthwhile aim?

So in fact those questions really are all about what do you think would be likely to be the significance of the effects of the decision as we expect it to be?

Professor George Joffe:
Well I think first of all one has to accept that it is only an advisory opinion from the court, there’s no reason for Israeli to accept it. In fact Israel does not even recognise that it is a legitimate decision for the court to make. Although the court argues it can.

What will actually happen now is the decision will be handed back to the United Nations, to the General Assembly, where the request actually came from and it is then for the General Assembly members to decide what they want to do. So at that level nothing is going to happen.

But at another level, something will. That’s to say it will give a degree of legitimacy to the Palestinian claims over the nature of the wall. They’ll be able to argue the case far more effectively in the international fora. They could even use it inside Israeli domestic law if they want to make claims against the Israeli government for damage done to their property for instance. And it could be that it is taken up at the Security Council and were that were to occur, then there really could be meaningful sanctions directed against Israel.

Newshost:
So given what you’ve just said there. Do you think it will be a watershed or not?

Professor George Joffe:
Ah, that’s another matter – I’m not so certain that it will. We already know that the White House has said that the court is not the most appropriate forum for a discussion of this issue which is largely based on the argument – again an Israeli argument – that this is a political matter and not a legal matter. And to some extend of course that’s true but it doesn’t alter the fact that there is legality involved and the legality revolves around the fact of where the wall actually goes.

Now for a wall to be built along the international ceasefire line, the green line, which is generally accepted as some kind of border between the occupied territories and Israel would be one thing – that would be very difficult to deny. But for it to actually deep into Palestinian territory – to effectively annex it – that’s another and that’s the reason why it’s an important matter.

Newshost:
Now on exactly that point, if they built it on that 1967 border, the green line. We’ve had a question on that just come in while we’ve been on air from Alston Nesketa in Cambridge: If Israel does keep the barrier along the 1967 border (which of course it is not proposing to do at the moment) could it then justify building it? Does international law allow countries to erect barriers on their internationally recognised borders?

Professor George Joffe:
Oh, absolutely international law does on their internationally recognised borders. But I have to point out that the ceasefire line is not yet agreed as the border – although it is generally accepted as an appropriate border. On that basis, yes, Israel certainly could build a wall if it believes that’s the best way in which it can guarantee its own security and the Palestinians have accepted that; their objection is not to the fact of the wall, it is to where it actually is.

Newshost:
Peter Scadding, Bristol asks: I fully support the Israelis right to protect their citizens, though I do feel some sympathy for those Palestinians who are pressurised by the fundamentalists into accepting the lawlessness and chaos that is produced. Why shouldn’t good people need to make a stand against these evil and wicked zealots?

Professor George Joffe:
Well maybe they should, although it is open to argument as to on which side the zealots actually are. But the real issue isn’t that. I agree that the Israeli government can certainly defend its own population. What it can’t do is to take other people’s property and that’s the real point about this particular intervention of the court.

The Israeli government, by redrawing the line so as to be able to annex large areas of the West Bank and include settlements there inside Israel, in effect has annexed property. And even though it argues that the wall is only temporary structure until the security situation quietens down, nobody in the world believes that. Everyone knows that once the fact that it has been created on the ground then that will become the fact that will become the basis of the future negotiations and those are the reasons why in effect this can’t be accepted.

Newshost:
We’ve had a question sent in anonymously and it is this: How many suicide bombings have there been since the fence has been put up?

That is an interesting point – Israel, I think, says that attacks of various kinds, not just suicide bombings, have been reduced by something like 90% since the building began.

Professor George Joffe:
That’s correct – there’ve been very few. I think if I remember correctly there have been two since the beginning of the year – that may be an underestimate but there have been very few indeed compared with the situation in the same period last year.

But again, I really don’t think that’s the point. No one argues about the right of Israel to use whatever security measures it may legitimately do. What they do argue about is what the concomitant losses to the Palestinians might be. I think one has to realise that’s the real purpose of the wall; it is not just a security measure, it is also a statement about what Israel wishes to control in any final settlement of the dispute with the Palestinians and on that basis I don’t think we can accept it.

Newshost:
Another question that’s come in whilst we’ve been on air from N. Haji, Toronto, Canada: How can Israel justify the wall when they themselves have been performing acts of terrorism in Gaza and the West Bank. Settle the Palestinian issue justly then that security is better than the wall?

Professor George Joffe:
Well I can’t argue with that conclusion; it is quite clearly correct and that’s been the situation for the last 58 years. The problem is that Israel is not yet prepared to consider a reasonable basis for negotiation. It argues that in effect the Palestinians abandoned negotiations way back in 2000. This is in fact not true; they were unable to accept the terms offered by Israel and the United States then but the negotiations work continued.

The Palestinians also would like to settle it by negotiation. Even Hamas, before the killing of its leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was prepared to consider negotiations as a way forward. The problem doesn’t lie there. The problem lies with Israeli intransigence and unwillingness to accept the principle of negotiation until in the end the Palestinians have abandoned all other methods of struggle.

Newshost:
Do you think that – whatever one feels about the outcome of this ruling which we are still awaiting formally – that it could have an impact on the attempts that are being made to get this famous Middle East road map back on track which of course is pretty much stalled at the moment? Some government of course have argued that, haven’t they, that this isn’t the best time to be forcing a decision on this issue.

We’ve had a question on those lines, from Alain Dekker, Manchester: The fight between Arab and Jew is very old. If the court rules, "You have to respect this individual", but that individual is waiting to kill you given half a chance, then how can normal logic work? Surely the peace process must come before petty details, and not the other way round.

Professor George Joffe:
Well yes and no. First of all remember in those petty details are literally tens of thousands of people who are losing land, water, access to resources, access to their families as part of the construction of the wall – that’s not really a petty detail. In fact it really inflames the situation and will make it far worse.

Secondly, yes of course negotiations would be far better but to negotiate you need two parties and they have to have a substance over which to negotiate and at the moment the Israeli government isn’t prepared to meaningfully negotiate.

Thirdly, the road map I’m afraid is dead; it is being replaced anyway by Mr Sharon by his proposal to withdraw from Gaza but to annex land on the West Bank and that’s currently what’s now being discussed.

But fourthly, that can’t be a basis for negotiation. The Palestinians have always argued that the basis to negotiations are resolutions 242 and 338 of the United Nations that actually argue for the return of occupied lands and they’re prepared to settle for that. That already is an extraordinarily generous gesture when you consider that their claim, just like the Israeli claim, is to the totality of mandate Palestine and not simply to one quarter of it.

Newshost:
We have a comment from Rob in Brighton who says: Surely issues like this can only be solved by bringing people together – the barrier keeps them apart.

I suppose in a sense this is what you’ve been reflecting. But I know that Israeli spokesmen who’ve been interviewed during the day and arguing the point about the actual route that’s being taken – of course so far we’ve got about a third of this completed – is that they would argue it is the practical route that is needed to provide protection. You can’t simply follow the green line. If they’re going to fulfil their own purposes of providing a secure security barrier, it has to take this kind of route even if it means in some cases, as you were describing, cutting people off.

Professor George Joffe:
But the reason for that is because they believe they must also provide protection to the many settlements inside the occupied territories. Those settlements are illegal. They were illegal when they were first constructed; they’ve been condemned by the United Nations; they’ve been condemned by virtually every country in the world, even the United States on occasion.

Now one has to ask the question whether it is legitimate therefore to provide protection to illegal settlements and thereby justify the line that the wall has taken or whether or not those settlements should not be evacuated so that the wall can be built appropriately along the green line as it should be.

Newshost:
You were talking earlier about the potential political consequences of this as well as the legalistic ones. We’ve been getting some view coming out of Israel – look let’s deal with withdrawal from Gaza first then we can talk more about the route of this security barrier. Wouldn’t that be a case – if you like the Palestinians can say they will have scored a victory if this ruling as we expect as the leaked reports go – wouldn’t there be a case for stopping at that point, seeing this withdrawal from Gaza through and then following through the politics of this?

Professor George Joffe:
Yes, but the problem is the withdrawal from Gaza is not a withdrawal on its own, it is accompanied by other things. It is part of a plan to actually re-entrench the Israeli presence on the West Bank and that means for the Palestinians, even though they’re quite prepared to accept the withdrawal from Gaza, they also realise the danger in that in terms of the West Bank. It is very difficult to ignore what’s happened so far. The wall is not being stopped in terms of its construction; it is continuing, so how can Palestinians ignore that – I don’t really think they can.

Newshost:
Ahmad Hmoud, Jordan: Does the ICJ – this court at the Hague – lose its credibility if countries are unable or not willing to punish Israel?

In a preamble to that he asks should we simply accept that countries like Israel can get away with the view they take about international law.

Even though as you said this is not binding – what view do you think that the Israeli response to this could have on the credibility of this court?

Professor George Joffe:
Well of course it is true that in the Arab world it will simply confirm what people already believe which is that no action will be taken or can be taken against Israel because of western objections. But I don’t think it necessarily devalues the court itself.

The court is an organ of the United Nations; it can only do what the United Nations wants it to do. It has limited powers anyway; that’s to say, it can make legal decisions but it can’t enforce them. If this weren’t simply an advisory opinion but was an actual judgement between two states, there’s no mechanism the court has to insist that the state should thereby abide by its decision, that’s part of the process of the court, it cannot simply enforce its judgments. It is there not for that purpose; it is there to indicate to the world what the true interpretation of international law should be and that moral status is in itself extremely important. And the Israeli government knows it which is one reason why it would like to rubbish the decision and claim that it is illegitimate as has been made.

Newshost:
An e-mail that’s come in while we’ve been on air from Sergev: who asks: I don’t know what “international laws” the UN court of justice is relying on in its decision regarding the barrier. But aren’t these laws archaic and irrelevant in the face of unlawful Islamic terrorism?

So in other words, face up to the reality on the ground here.

Professor George Joffe:
Yes, but the reality is that if you don’t have rules that guide international behaviour then you really will have anarchy and therefore in a sense the importance of international law and the principles of international law is even more acute today than it was in the past. The evidence also is that main force doesn’t work and one of the reasons why international law came into being was simply for that reason that it was found to be a better way of resolving disputes than simply trying to fight it out.

And I have say the evidence to date over the war against terror and activities against so-called terrorism has demonstrated that to be true. There are very few examples of the use of force alone as a means of solving disputes and of solving arbitrary violence of the kind that occurs inside the occupied territories.

Newshost:
Well, we’ve no confirmation yet of that ruling – though as I was saying at the beginning, very much a leaked one and very much an expected one at any time. And that’s all we have time for. My thanks to our guest, Professor George Joffe and to you for your questions. From me, Mike Wooldridge and the rest of the news interactive team here in London, goodbye.