Reader Sidney Raphael of New York writes an interesting comment on the subject of barrier walls:

Now that the ICJ has decided Israel's fence is illegal, will the UN now turn its attention to another defensive fence, the thing we call nowadays the Great Wall of China?

There are at least two major differences between the Israeli fence and the Great Wall:

1) The Great Wall never worked.

2) Tourists flock to the Great Wall believing it is an beloved icon of Chinese civilization.  The average Chinese person has a quite different view of the Great Wall and is, beneath the surface, horrified at tourists' adulation.  To the average Chinese person, the building of the Great Wall was accomplished by massive forced labor, deprivation and death.  The rulers grabbed land and forced people to work on their grandiose project.  The people knew the fence didn't do the job it was intended to do, but had no power to resist the rulers.  The Great Wall is a hated symbol of corrupt power.  Israel's fence, on the other hand, is just an expensive building project carried on in the fashion of any large building project.  No hated forced labor there.