Blz: Belize against the Israeli wall

We agree that Belizeans do want to live in peace and harmony with all peoples of all races and faiths. But the prospects for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not good, and are made worse by the building of this wall. Belize is not aligning its foreign policy to the Palestinian cause (as suggested by the Reporter) by speaking out against the wall. Rather, it is in line with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations to “respect the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.” The construction of the West Bank Wall is in direct breach of the rule of customary international law against the acquisition of territory by force or annexation. Belize has done well to come out in opposition to this action.

This would have more credibility if Belizeans could say the same thing after having their citizens murdered by homicide bombers on a regular basis. The writer speaks of the need for those talking out on the issue of the wall to do research. Would that he had done some, too.

A little research would've discovered that for every homicide bombing in which 1+ Israelis are murdered, many more -- sometimes hundreds -- are injured. The word "injured" sounds almost light, but homicide bombers pack bombs with nails, bolts, and other small projectiles, sometimes with rat poison to prevent blood from clotting. I think it is safe to say that those who die in these bombings may be the lucky ones. See here, scroll down to see the pictures here, here, here. If a lot of countries in the world had to put up with this, they'd build walls, too.

In fact, some have, without experiencing a fraction of the terror to which the Israelis have been subjected by Islamic Arabs.

Michael Freund, the former director of communications and policy planning under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, correctly notes that there are fences going up all over the globe. Pakistan is objecting to an elaborate fence built by India in disputed Kashmir. Yet the world is not screaming that India is stealing "occupied Pakistani territory." Kuwait put up a security fence to protect itself from the once-militant Iraq. Namibia did the same with its neighbor Angola, and South Korea erected one in order to prevent possible attacks by its communist neighbor to the north. Spain invested 35 million dollars to erect a fence equipped with state-of-the-art security cameras and fiber optic sensors around Melilla in order to separate it from the rest of Morocco. Similar separations exist between Lithuania and Belarus as well as Slovakia and the Ukraine. Even Saudi Arabia, one of Israel's harshest critics, recently began erecting a fence along its border with Yemen.

Thus, unless countries around the globe protest the walls erected between peoples by these and other countries, they should avoid imposing a different standard on Israel.