Will and Law in Israel

July 3, 2004

THERE IS a partial victory for justice in Israel's Supreme Court ruling that one stretch of the state's security barrier in the West Bank must be relocated to protect the human rights of Palestinian villagers.

In saying that Israel has to balance the requirements of security against the imperative of lawfulness, the high court sounded a magisterial note. If Wednesday's decision of the three-judge panel is heard properly, it may teach Israelis a crucial lesson about the sources of their society's true strength while at the same time suggesting to Palestinians how they can best achieve the goal of an independent, viable state living in peace alongside Israel.

"Regarding the state's struggle against the terror that rises up against it," the justices wrote, "we are convinced that at the end of the day, a struggle according to the law will strengthen her power and her spirit." The judges were telling their compatriots that Israel is stronger when the state acts in lawful ways. By implication, the judges were also warning that when Israeli authorities give in to the temptation to disregard the law, the ultimate effect can be to leave Israel less secure.

The court's equating of security with legality was particularly apt because the justices were ruling in response to a petition filed jointly by Palestinians in the village of Beit Sourik and their Israeli neighbors in a nearby town. The two communities had argued that the original route of the barrier, by separating village farmers from their land, would cause hostility between formerly friendly neighbors and increase rather than diminish the danger to Israel. Anticipating that the high court's decision will inspire appeals against other portions of the barrier, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government must now prepare to tear down sections that are already built, compensate local residents for damage to their land, and alter the barrier's route wherever it violates what the Supreme Court justices called Palestinians' "rights under humanitarian international law."

The court's ruling ameliorates an untenable situation. Nonetheless, it is only a legal corrective to one particular injustice, not a cure for the conflict between two peoples fighting over how to divide a small parcel of land. The judges accepted the government's claim that the barrier is for security purposes, not for the political purpose of permanently annexing Palestinian land. They also rejected the petitioners' contention that any security structure should be built within Israel's 1967 borders on the so-called Green Line.

It is not for a court to persuade Israelis to sacrifice settlements for security or Palestinians to end terrorism for the sake of their state. Only political leaders can make those historic decisions.