@l@ is that is. The ./configure script for gettext should have replaced that with something platform specific when generating the Makefile.

Google on "No rule to make target `libintl" to see others with similar problems if you haven't already. Seems to be related to buggy/incompatible Autoconf and/or gettext versions' not processing these variables correctly during ./configure

I'd look a bit further (I'm easily amused) but gnu.org seems to have broken the Google result links for all of their online documentation.