It was 10 on the dot on Monday morning when the usher called the International Court of Justice to order to hear the case against Israel’s West Bank ”security fence”.
Inside the United Nations building, officially called the Peace Palace, everything went smoothly.
Judge Shi Jiuyong of China and 14 colleagues in black gowns listened as Palestinian representatives explained why what they call the ”apartheid wall” was illegal, and a barrier to peace.
Preparations had been meticulous, with Dutch police officers standing guard in the tree-lined streets of The Hague to keep order as the case began.
But outside the neo-gothic building, the fury of the Middle East raged unabated. Evidence of the conflict’s human cost was everywhere.
Supporters of Israel had shipped in the wreckage of the No 19 bus blown apart by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem three weeks ago.
The remains of the bus were carried on a lorry, the twisted seats exposed, and bearing posters of the 11 dead.
Eight people died in another Jerusalem bus bombing on Monday.
Israel’s case is that its 720km barrier is designed to prevent such atrocities, not to grab more Arab land.
”Stop terror and the walls come down,” declared the placards of its supporters in the designated demonstration area opposite the court.
Inside the chamber, Nasser al-Qidwa, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, was disagreeing — Israel’s wall would render it ”practically impossible” to build a viable Palestinian state.
”This wall is not about security,” he said. ”It is about entrenching the occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of Palestinian land.”
Out on the cold pavement it was atrocity for atrocity.
Photographs of Israeli victims of terrorism were displayed on a giant poster, each one a passport-sized reminder of violent death.
Naomi Yaakobovitz, a teacher, held up a picture of one of her pupils, 14-year-old Hadar Hershkovitz. She was blown up in a Herzliya restaurant, one of the 438 Israelis killed in suicide bombings.
”She was a lovely girl, very sweet, very sporty. She was completely innocent,” Yaakobovitz said.
Across the road, Wathiq Saadi, from Nablus, carried a photo of eight-month-old Iman Hajjo with a fatal bullet wound in the middle of her stomach.
”Israel does not respect the decisions of international law, and I don’t expect it to listen to this court,” he said.
Sharif Omar, a farmer, described how his 42 acres of ”paradise” — olives, oranges, avocado and apricot trees — were now on the wrong side of the concrete and steel barrier.
Regardless of the ”legal consequences of the construction of a wall in occupied Palestinian territory” — the dry question on which the court has been asked to give a non-binding opinion by the UN — for Omar, the consequence is not being able to get to his orchards.
Similarly, tens of thousands of Palestinians are cut off from markets, and from resources such as water, healthcare and education.
Israel is boycotting the hearing, saying the court is not qualified to make any ruling. ”We don’t want to give legitimacy to the proceedings,” said Daniel Taub, a government legal adviser.
On the streets of The Hague, it was hard to see how to the gap between the sides might be bridged.
Terri Boulata, a Palestinian, was having a shouting match with David Shalom, an Iraqi-born Israeli who lives in London.
”If you don’t acknowledge that I exist, that’s your problem,” Boulata told him.
”You are sending your children to kill us,” retorted Shalom, the flag of the rightwing Zionist Betar movement draped around his shoulders.
In the West Bank and Gaza, thousands of Palestinians marched to protest at the wall, sometimes pushed back by Israeli soldiers firing teargas.
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, issued a statement saying: ”Peace will not be achieved between the two peoples in the presence of a wall of annexation, expansion and apartheid.”
In all, 916 Israelis and 2 770 Palestinians have been killed since the second intifada erupted in September 2000.
It has been the bloodiest and most prolonged bout of continuous violence the conflict has seen – and in The Hague yesterday no one was giving an inch. – Guardian Unlimited Â