There they were, one forever carrying the mantle of nonviolence, the other still in his war fatigues. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the father of the nonviolent struggle, last week visited Yasser Arafat, the man who reintroduced terrorism as a modern political tool.

Joining a demonstration against Israel’s maligned defensive barrier, Mr. Gandhi pointed out that like his grandfather, Mahatma, “I spent my childhood in South Africa…What I’ve seen today reminds me of Bantustans,” Mr. Gandhi told the crowd.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Non-Aligned Movement shed not a tear for 50,000 dead in Sudan. Instead, the annual NAM meeting in Durban earlier this month concentrated on that old standard: the fight to liberate Palestine from its foreign usurpers.

Since its establishment in 1955, the bloc of 115 nations has been mostly nonaligned with America. It still is, through Israel, which it resolved to hit with sanctions. From now on, one provision in the latest resolution said, NAM states will block entrance to visitors who live in Israeli settlements.

Israelis might care less. Their passports do not disclose whether they live in Tel Aviv or Hebron. Furthermore, many Third-World NAM members would welcome some Israeli tourists, who bring in hard cash.

But this is only the beginning. “What was adopted by NAM, naturally, at some point has to come before the General Assembly,” the victorious Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Nasser al-Kidwa, told me last week.

At the U.N., numerous organs are dedicated to the fight against colonialism. Decades after the colonies transformed into independent states, anachronistic bodies like NAM, cynically formed at the height of the Cold War, are left with Israel, via its “occupation,” as practically its only target.

Still not a state representative, Mr. al-Kidwa has found a way to use NAM to set the U.N.’s agenda. Last spring he conducted the complex set of maneuvers that led to July’s advisory opinion by the Hague-based International Court of Justice that deemed Israel’s barrier illegal and called to dismantle it.

Now Mr. al-Kidwa plans to use that court case to add to more than 20 existing anti-Israeli resolutions, automatically backed by a NAM majority. This is shaping up as the most interesting floor fight as top world leaders descend on Manhattan for the annual mid-September U.N. meeting.

Israel is concerned. Surrounded by academic stars, the country’s attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, recently urged the Sharon government to pay more attention to international institutions.

Israelis “have started to understand that you cannot go this way forever,” Mr. al-Kidwa said. “After the advisory opinion, as we said, Israel will have to make a choice, either to respect the rules of law or to officially become an outlaw state.”

Old Foreign Office hands in Jerusalem believe the fight is serious, but is a political rather than a judicial academic exercise, and they deride Mr. Mazuz’s approach. Alan Baker, soon to become ambassador to Canada and until recently the Foreign Office legal adviser, told me the lobbying effort must start with Europe and nations like Canada.

So far the Europeans are hardly resisting Mr. al-Kidwa.

“We are on the same wavelength,” he said, pointing to a recent European Union ban on imports of Israeli goods that are manufactured in the disputed territories.

European arguments on the barrier are all over the map. The most elegant formulation is that coupled with strong-arm tactics, the fence will actually breed new terrorists, rather than stop them.

As Mr. Gandhi said, after comically urging Mr. Arafat to move to a nonviolent struggle, “This wall will not bring security to Israel.”

All evidence shows that it very much has, though, and even Europe is impressed. The E.U. recently considered bids by Israeli companies to build a barrier between its newest members, Poland and Hungary, and neighboring Belarus and Ukraine, to assure that no migrant workers get through.

Unlike the ideological zeal in the old colonies, former European masters are all realpolitik. They see nothing wrong with lecturing Israel about evil tactics that they would hire Israelis to implement.

And so, Europe will join the U.N. majority, and the standard of “Zionism is Racism” will live a decade after it was officially erased from the books.