When I came out of the beautiful Supreme Court building, I was feeling depressed.
I had listened for hours to proceedings on a number of applications concerning the separationwall. I was especially interested in the part of the wall that is threatening to ruin the livesof the residents of a-Ram. There, it will be remembered, the planned wall runs the full lengthof the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, which passes through a-Ram. The strip along the middle of theroad will be displaced by an 8-meter high concrete wall that will cut off most of the town’sinhabitants from their work places, schools, hospitals and even cemetery.
Up to now, the building of this wall has been held up by the Supreme Court’s temporaryinjunction. This has now been lifted, and next week the cranes will start erecting theconcrete slabs that have been lying on the ground along the road. They will shut out the worldbeyond.
At a certain stage, the three judges – headed by Chief Justice Aharon Barak – called the lawyersof the two sides to approach the bench and explain the map to them. The attorneys, including amilitary lawyer in uniform, came forward. But not they alone. With them was a civilian who is nolawyer – a kippah-wearing settler called Danny Tirza, the chief of the Ministry of Defensewall-construction department.
This Tirza became famous last month, when the Supreme Court announced that the governmentmust change the path of the wall. On leaving the courtroom, Tirza went straight up to the TVcameras and declared that from now on the Supreme Court will bear the responsibility for everyJew murdered. This impertinent remark caused a public uproar and Tirza was officiallyrebuked by his bosses.
That did not hinder him from approaching the bench now and lecturing the judges at length aboutthe necessity of building the wall at once. It did not occur to anyone to invite the mayor ofa-Ram, Sirhan Salaimeh, who was sitting in the first row, to put his case. A settler – yes. Alocal Palestinian – no.
What happened next was even more disturbing. At the request of the government attorneys, asenior commander of the Border Police, a Druze as it happens, was asked to explain to the judgeswhy a delay in the building of the wall will result in the murder of Jews. Indeed, just a few daysago a “terrorist” was found hiding in a mosque in a-Ram. (May God forgive me for having a twistedmind, but this story aroused my suspicions from the first moment. This arrest, just a few daysbefore the court hearing, came at a moment just too convenient for the security services.)
Generally, only lawyers may address the Supreme Court. It is quite unusual for anyone else tobe allowed to speak there. The officer’s long speech, without the opportunity of a rebuttal,is even more unusual. It shows that even in the 57 th year since the founding of the State ofIsrael, military officers enjoy a special standing in the Supreme Court.
The officer’s message was quite simple: delay in the building of the wall can facilitateterrorist attacks. That is to say, if the court causes more hold-ups, it will be responsiblefor the consequences. Indirectly, in a more sophisticated way, this officer repeated thecrude blackmail of Tirza the settler.
The final result: the court caved in under the pressure and withdrew the delaying order. I wassad but not surprised, I am sorry to say.
True, the Supreme Court is an oasis in the Israeli landscape. Even architecturally. While notvery impressive from the outside, it is beautiful inside. Unlike the pompous, monumentalstyle that is common to most superior court buildings in the world, our Supreme Court is ahuman-sized, airy building, with open spaces and interior courtyards reminiscent of theAlhambra in Granada. There are interesting plays of light and shadow. It is surrounded by alovely garden, open to all. The halls, too, are convenient and pleasant. Security checks areminimal and unusually polite.
More importantly, the court is also a political oasis. At a time when democracy isdegenerating, the government cynical and the Knesset behaving irresponsibly, the SupremeCourt is the last fortress. Since Israel does not have a constitution, the Supreme Court hastaken upon itself the task of blocking laws that contravene the basic values of Israelidemocracy. As attested by public opinion polls, the court enjoys the highest prestige amongpublic institutions (with politicians and the media at the bottom.)
If so, then what happened this time?
Aharon Barak once explained to me his basic guiding principle: The court has no army of its own.It cannot use force to make its decisions stick. It is completely dependent on the trust andsupport of the general public. Therefore, it cannot go too far beyond what the public canstomach.
In security matters, the situation is even more delicate. True, the days are gone when thecourt automatically stood at attention when an army officer appeared before it. But it isstill possible to impress the court unduly with security arguments. Aharon Barak himself is aHolocaust survivor: as a child he was spirited out of the Warsaw ghetto, hidden under sacks ofpotatoes in a cart. His receptivity to security arguments is especially high.
Against this background, it is worth comparing the “advisory opinion” of the InternationalCourt of Justice in The Hague with the decision of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. The Haguejudges decided, to put it simply, that Israel does have the right to build a wall, but only on itsown land, bounded by the pre-1967 Green Line. It has no right to build it on occupied land, themore so when its intention is to annex settlements that are themselves illegal underinternational law.
The Israeli court went through all kinds of contortions and decided that “exaggerated” harmto the Palestinian population must be avoided, but it accepted the right of Israel to build thewall on Palestinian territory if this is necessary for “security reasons” – namely, toprotect Israeli settlements. Thus the court confirmed, indirectly, that it considers thesettlements legal.
That creates a delicate situation. In the course of the hearing, Barak suggested that bothsides – the government and the Palestinian applicants – submit written opinions about thedecision of the International Court. “It is impossible to avoid dealing with it any longer,”he said. Clearly, he is in a dilemma: as a judge and renowned professor of law, Barak has a highinternational standing, which he is loath to put at risk. Therefore, he is interested inavoiding a clash between his court and the Hague judges.
The decision about the a-Ram wall has an interesting aspect that has drawn little attention.The restraining order was temporary, and so is the decision to suspend it. Barak announcedthat he is allowing the government to start building the wall, but that, if the court decides inthe end that this path of the wall is illegal, it will be necessary to take it apart and move itsomewhere else.
Thus, for the first time, it was spelled out that the wall is, in reality, a temporarystructure. The crane that puts the pre-fabricated concrete slabs in place can, with the sameease, raise them up again and take them away.
This may not be much comfort for the inhabitants of a-Ram, whose lives and businesses are in themeantime being ruined, but it is encouraging nevertheless. It repeats what we have beensaying at all our demonstrations: that this monstrosity resembles the Berlin wall. Much asthe German wall suddenly crumbled, this one, too, will come down.
This was tested yesterday, at a demonstration in Abu-Dis, not far from a-Ram. Israelis andPalestinians came to meet Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the legendary Mahatma. Abu Ala, thePalestinian Prime Minister, himself a resident of Abu-Dis, delivered the main speech.Later, we approached the wall and hit it symbolically with a hammer. When my turn came, Inoticed that even with such a small hammer it was possible to break off little chunk. A reallybig hammer could open a hole.
More importantly, during one of the speeches we saw that we had lost the attention of ouraudience. All heads were turned to something going on behind us. There, in an incrediblydaring exploit, one of the demonstrators climbed the steep wall, in spite of its smoothsurface, using only his bare hands and heels. After reaching the top he threw a rope down, and anumber of other followed him up and unfurled a Palestinian flag.
So it can be done. Not by a pregnant woman on her way to hospital, not by children on their way toschool, nor by a family on its way to visit relatives, but a trained suicide bomber can cross thewall at night. There go the security arguments.
By the way, the Berlin wall was smashed and the debris sold as souvenirs to foreign and localtourists. A really sharp operator would now be applying for a concession to sell off chunkswhen this wall’s time comes.