U.N. seeks opinion on Israeli barrier
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Israel says the barrier will stop Palestinian terrorists. Palestinians call it a land grab.
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UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. General Assembly voted to send the issue of Israel's West Bank barrier to the International Court of Justice for an opinion on its legality.
The final vote was 90 in favor, 8 opposed and 74 abstentions. Thirty-nine members did not vote.
Israel says the barrier is a security fence necessary to stop Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel and killing civilians, but Palestinians see it as a land grab that worsens what they regard as a suffocating siege against them.
Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador, criticized the U.N. action.
"Let me be perfectly clear," Gillerman said. "This is the Arafat fence. This is the fence that (Palestinian President Yasser) Arafat built. His terrorism initiated it and made its construction inevitable. If there were no Arafat, there would be no fence."
Gillerman said that if the U.N. were truly concerned with "the welfare of Palestinian civilians, we would have seen by now a plethora of resolutions condemning Palestinian terrorism" and requests for reports detailing misuse of funds by the Palestinian leadership.
Prior to the vote, Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative, called the barrier "the shame of the century."
"How could this possibly happen," said Kidwa. "How is it possible to allow the destruction of the livelihood of tens of thousands of people with the confiscation of their lands and the destruction of their farms?"
Abstention by Canada, Japan, Britain
Many of the 74 abstentions -- Canada, Japan and Britain among them -- reiterated their opposition to the barrier's construction in their post-vote comments, but said they felt an ICJ opinion is ill-advised at this time.
The United States was firmly opposed to the resolution, saying it was counterproductive to the "road map" to peace sponsored by the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia.
The resolution approved by the General Assembly is a Palestinian initiative initially proposed in October -- when the General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to demand that Israel halt its construction on the barrier -- but dropped when several European Union nations argued that it would politicize the court.
Last month, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a report highly critical of the Israeli barrier, saying Israel "is not in compliance" with the U.N. demand.
The barrier's route stretches north to south, much of it inside the Green Line -- the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank, which was part of Jordan at the time of the Six Day War -- and it juts deep into the West Bank in places.
