THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The highest U.N. court issued a sweeping condemnation of Israel's occupation policies Friday, siding with the Palestinians in declaring that Israel must tear down the 425-mile-long security barrier it is building in the West Bank.

In a sharply worded advisory opinion - far harsher than Israel expected - the International Court of Justice said Israel should compensate Palestinians harmed by the structure and return property confiscated for its construction.

In addition to finding that the barrier violates international law, the court also called for a negotiated peace settlement that would see the establishment of a Palestinian state "as soon as possible."

CAIRO, March 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Egypt's Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohammad Sayed Tantawi on Sunday, March 22, strongly condemned Israel’s killing of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, calling for ‘punishment’ for those who committed this crime.

The assassination of Sheikh Yassin and his companions is a despicable crime that shook the entire world, Tantawi said.

“This is a heinous crime that must not go without punishment,” Tantawi told reporters in his first statement regarding the assassination.

“It is a horrible crime that has shocked the whole international community,” he said adding that the assassins did not take into consideration the fact that Sheikh Yassin was an old and paralyzed man.

By Dina Lahlou

AMMAN Doctors in Amman are calling the human damage to Palestinian civilians caused by the Israeli army shocking. Dr Nasri Khoury, a neurosurgeon and director of Palestine Hospital in Amman, is keeping a detailed record of the kinds of injuries sustained by Intifada patients in his care.

I came across many different kinds of bullets that I extracted from my patients, the doctor explained. What are commonly referred to as dumdum bullets are in reality something else.

USA TODAY

When Ariel Sharon visited President Bush on Wednesday, the Israeli prime minister won a hoped-for endorsement of his new peace initiative — and far more.

Bush not only backed Sharon's plan to pull 7,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and hand it over to Palestinians who live there, but he also suggested Israel could keep part of the West Bank in a final agreement.

The election of Ariel Sharon as Prime
Minister of Israel by that nation's Jewish citizens
does not come as a surprise to the Palestinian community.
Israel has revealed its true intentions for peace today
as it voted into office a murderous war criminal. Being
faced with the reality that it must restore Palestinian
rights, Israel has opted to hide behind a warmonger,
whose life-long career has been stained, over and over
again, with Palestinian blood.

CAIRO, March 22 – A host of prominent Muslim scholars exhorted on Monday, March 22, Arab and Muslim rulers to support the Palestinian resistance in the face of the unabated Israeli aggressions culminated in the daybreak assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin.

Renowned scholar Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi urged all Muslim leaders and peoples to rally behind the Palestinian resistance.

"Only force and jihad work with those aggressors," Sheikh Qaradawi told IslamOnline.net over the phone.

"The assassination of Sheikh Yassin proved that the [moribund] peace talks with the Israelis are nothing but lies. This is the true face of Zionism, which pays no attention to any humanitarian value."

ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's top-ranking cleric on Sunday rallied more than two million Muslim pilgrims from 160 countries against Israel and the defenders of human rights in the West in a sermon outside Mecca.

"Jerusalem is suffering under the occupation of pillaging Jews, who are oppressing our weakened Muslim brothers in Palestine under the gaze of those who call for human rights to be defended," said Sheikh Abdelaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh.

"Where are the disciples of human rights who do not stop spitting out hostile words against Islam like a poison?" Sheikh Abdelaziz asked during a sermon delivered on the Arafat plain, 20 kilometres (12 miles) southeast of Mecca.

By Robert Fisk

'Fear of being slandered as "anti-Semites" means we are abetting terrible deeds in the Middle East'

What if we had supported the apartheid regime of South Africa against the majority black population? What if we had lauded the South African white leadership as "hard-line warriors" rather than racists?

What if we had explained the shooting of 56 black protesters at Sharpeville as an understandable "security crackdown" by the South African police. And described black children shot by the police as an act of "child sacrifice" by their parents? What if we had called upon the "terrorist" ANC leadership to "control their own people".

The whole world slammed Israel for its extrajudicial execution of newly-appointed Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Abdelaziz Rantissi, with the European Union dubbing it "unlawful and provocative". Washington alone, however, defended Israel.

In Straffan, Ireland, E.U. Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said late Saturday, April 17, that Israel's extrajudicial execution of Rantissi was "not conducive to lowering tension".

"The European Union has consistently condemned extrajudicial killings," Solana said in a statement issued during talks between E.U. and Asian foreign ministers, according to Reuters.

Furious Palestinians tried to rally the world today against US president George W. Bush's decision to break with longtime US and international policy to say Israel could keep parts of the West Bank captured in war.

Bush coupled what Israel hailed as a historic statement yesterday with an endorsement of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral Gaza pullout plan and a negation of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

The US "guarantees" gave Sharon what he wanted to win over Israeli sceptics of his plan to uproot Gaza's 20 settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank while retaining "for eternity" larger enclaves there with the bulk of the 230 000 settlers.