(Ha'aretz) Shlomo Shamir and Aluf Benn - Prime Minister Sharon's spokesman Ra'anan Gissin said, "This is an attempt...to delegitimize the right of the Jewish people to have a Jewish state that they can defend." Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, called the vote "a moral victory," saying "most of the world's enlightened democracies" were among the large number of countries that didn't support the resolution, while those who voted in favor were "mostly tyrannical dictatorships, corrupt and human rights-defying regimes." The EU countries joined the unusually high number of abstentions, believing that seeking an opinion from the court was legally questionable and would work against a political dialogue. Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom decided prior to the vote that Israel would cooperate with the international court in the Hague should the resolution pass and that Israel would argue that the decision to build the barrier was based on self-defense. Israel would present its position that the barrier is legal and stands up to all standards of judicial scrutiny.
2003-12-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive