It was 10am 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 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 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. Eleven people died in that bombing and another eight lives were claimed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Israel’s case is that its 64km 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 outside the court.
Inside, 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 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.
Meanwhile, Sharif Omar, a farmer, described how his 17ha of ”paradise” 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.
It is difficult to see how the gap between the sides might be bridged.
In the West Bank and Gaza, thousands of Palestinians marched to protest at the wall, sometimes pushed back by Israeli soldiers.
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 this week no one was giving an inch.
The hearing ended on Wednesday. No date has been set for the court to release its findings, although any verdict will be merely advisory. — Â