Israel Barrier's Day In Court

There were protests and demonstrations both in The Hague as well as in Gaza and the West Bank, as the International Court of Justice Monday opened hearings on the legality of the security fence.

The head of the Palestinian delegation said that the security fence prevents the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Israel is boycotting the hearings, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, saying the court is the wrong forum for discussion of a political issue.

"These proceedings will bring no good, neither to the peace process, nor to the court itself," said Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom.

Several minutes before the start of the hearings, a bombed bus was displayed in front of the Peace Palace in The Hague where the hearings were being held.

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip marched in protest against Israel's separation barrier Monday, and in some locations were pushed back by Israeli soldiers firing tear gas.

Schools and government offices let out early for the marches, which coincided with world court hearings on the legality of the barrier. Earlier Monday, Yasser Arafat had urged Palestinians to "make their voices heard" to the court.

Palestinian spokeswoman Diana Buttu called the security barrier a land grab.

"The problem that Israel faces is that it wants land and it doesn't want peace," she said.

Israel claims that after more than 100 suicide bombings over the last three years — the most recent Sunday killed eight people in addition to the bomber and wounded 59 others — the Palestinians have no one to blame for the barrier, but themselves.

The blast went off during morning rush hour as the packed city bus drove past a gas station in downtown Jerusalem overlooking the walled Old City. Sunday is a regular weekday in Israel.

Overnight, Israeli troops demolished bomber Mohammed Zoul's family home in the West Bank village of Hussan near Bethlehem. Relatives had blood samples taken for DNA testing, and his three brothers were taken into custody.

Dozens of pro-Israeli protesters outside the Peace Palace held up a large poster with photographs of many of the over 900 Israeli victims of terror of over three years of violence.

The protesters included Christian supporters of Israel, reported Israel's Maariv newspaper. The demonstrators sang "Hatikvah," the Israeli national anthem.

Inside, the Palestinian Authority's envoy to the United Nations Nasser al-Kidwa said that the fence was not a security issue and will "render the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict practically impossible."

"The wall is not about security," Kidwa said. "It is about entrenching the occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of Palestinian land."

Israeli officials said Sunday's attack never would have happened had the section of the barrier being built around Jerusalem already been completed.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said that those responsible for the bombing harmed the Palestinian campaign against the barrier before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands.

In Washington, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Qureia did not go far enough. "It is time to move beyond words and take action to dismantle these terrorist networks," he said.

The partition, which is to run up to 450 miles and at times dips deep into the West Bank, and is about one-third completed, disrupts the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who have difficulties getting to fields, jobs and schools.

The Washington-based group Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday that while Israel has the right to defend itself, the route of the barrier violates international law and the human rights of Palestinians.

"The existing and planned route of the barrier appears to be designed chiefly to incorporate and make contiguous with Israel illegal civilian settlements," the report said.

"On this day of the hearing ... in the international court, the whole world should pay attention to the unprecedented human tragedy that is being inflicted on our people because of the occupation," Arafat said.

"This is another Berlin Wall," Arafat said. "Peace will not be achieved between the two peoples and in the entire region in the presence of the wall of annexation, expansion and apartheid."

More than 10,000 Palestinian demonstrators, including many government employees and students, marched in most West Bank towns.

In two locations, near the towns of Jenin and Tulkarem, soldiers fired tear gas to keep thousands of marchers from coming too close to the barrier.

In Bethlehem and the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, troops fired tear gas to disperse stone throwers, and three people were treated for tear gas inhalation.

Marches also took place in Qalqiliya, a town ringed by a tall wall as part of the separation project, as well as in Nablus and Ramallah. "The wall must fall," read a banner carried by Ramallah marchers.

The widow of a Jerusalem grocer killed in Sunday's bombing wrote to the world court Monday that her husband, 48-year-old Yehuda Haim, would still be alive had Israel completed construction of its West Bank barrier.

Haim's widow, Fanny, asked the world court judges not to rule against the barrier. "I am appealing to you as someone who has lost a husband, someone whose heart has stopped — and someone whose tragedy could have been averted by the separation fence," Haim wrote in a letter published in the Yediot Ahronot daily.

One of Haim's brothers-in-law serves as a commercial attaché at the Israeli Embassy in The Hague and has been working for months to try to explain why Israel is building the barrier.