"What is in motion at The Hague (news - web sites) is an attempt to deny Israel the fundamental right to defend itself. We will not surrender. I will build the security fence and will complete it, as the cabinet decided," Sharon told the Maariv newspaper.
Israeli bulldozers began work on 42 kilometers (25 miles) of the barrier in the northern West Bank village of Beit Surik despite a protest by 100 residents, an AFP correspondent witnessed Tuesday.
Israel's army radio quoted military officials as saying a total of 200 kilometers of the barrier would be built by the end of the year, including the section that surrounds Jerusalem.
Some 180 kilometers have been built so far and the barrier, Israel's most expensive project ever, is planned to be completed by the end of next year.
Sharon slammed the ICJ hearings, held at the behest of the United Nations (news - web sites), saying, "what is in motion at The Hague is an attempt to deny Israel the fundamental right to defend itself."
He also criticized the "campaign of hypocrisy currently being staged against Israel in the international circus in The Hague."
Sharon's government has decided to boycott the three-day hearings, arguing the world court does not have the ability to rule on its "anti-terror fence."
It submitted a written statement to defend the barrier instead, stressing it is being built solely to prevent infiltrations by would-be Palestinian attackers into its territory.
The Palestinian legal team in The Hague has rested its case against the barrier on the fact it does not follow the Green Line, or the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the Palestinian territories, which were subsequently occupied by the Jewish state after the 1967 war.
"The wall being built on the West Bank is not about security, it's about entrenching the occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of the Palestinian land," Nasser al-Qidwa, the Palestinian representative to the UN, told the court Monday.
The barrier, a montage of razor wire, trenches, steel fencing, cement and watchtowers, juts into the West Bank at several points and cuts off entire villages from their fields, schools and hospitals.
In Beit Surik, around 100 villagers tried to stop two Israeli bulldozers by lying down in front of them and clashes broke out between them and Israeli border police who used sound grenades and beat them with sticks as the bulldozers began levelling a field of olive trees.
One resident, who suffered a head wound, was arrested and taken away by police.
Meanwhile in Israel, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he "categorically" rejected the deployment of an international peace keeping force in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) after Israel carries out its planned evacuation of most of its settlements there.
"I am categorically opposed to the deployment of such an interposing force which would lead to the internationalisation of the conflict," a statement from Shalom's ministry quoted him as saying.
Shalom was responding to a proposal last week from his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin, who also suggested an international conference.
The evacuation of 17 of the 21 Gaza Strip settlements has been mooted by Sharon as part of a unilateral "disengagement" from the Palestinians, whom he accuses of not fulfilling their obligations under the peace plan known as the roadmap.
In apparent preparations for the Gaza pullout, the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence, Meir Dagan, was reported to have visited Egypt in the past few days.
The Haaretz daily said Dagan also sounded out Egyptian officials about the consequences of an army withdrawal from Israel's border with Egypt within the larger framework on the settlement evacuation.
It said Israel wants guarantees Egypt will prevent weapon smuggling from its territory into the Gaza Strip, particularly through tunnels.
In the southern West Bank, a militant of the hardline Hamas movement and a member of the Palestinian intelligence services were arrested in near Bethlehem, Palestinian security sources said.
The army could not immediately confirm the arrest.
