MIDDLE EAST: Israel will reroute its West Bank barrier closer to its boundary with the Occupied Territory under a court order that Palestinians must not be cut off from their lands, the project's administrator said yesterday.
It was the first confirmation of leaks from security sources that the barrier, which the World Court and UN General Assembly have branded illegal and said should be dismantled, would in future run nearer to the "Green Line" frontier.
Senior political sources said the route revisions made by Defence Ministry planners would be presented to the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, next week for final approval.
Israel says the barrier is its bulwark against infiltrating suicide bombers.
But previously planned or built sections snake well inside the West Bank to encompass large Jewish settlements Israel vows not to cede under any peace deal with Palestinians.
Palestinians condemn the network of razor-tipped fencing and concrete walls as a precursor to Israel annexing land it took in the 1967 Middle East war. They say this would deny them a viable state promised them by a US-backed "road map" peace plan.
In a precedent-setting decision on a Palestinian appeal last month, Israel's High Court ordered that a 30-km (18-mile) section be moved to ease hardship on Palestinians. But it also said Israel may erect a "security" barrier on land it considers "disputed".
"In the framework of the changes spurred by the High Court ruling, when the new maps are published they will show movement toward the Green Line, although not right on the Green Line," said Mr Netzah Mashiah, director of the Defence Ministry's barrier administration.
With the "road map" process stalled by persistent violence, Mr Sharon aims to "disengage" Israel from the Palestinians by evacuating all 8,000 settlers from occupied Gaza next year and a few hundred among the 230,000 in the much larger West Bank.
Mr Sharon is bent on smashing Palestinian militant groups in the meantime to prevent them claiming victory in a settler exodus. Yesterday missiles killed two Palestinians in their car in Israel's latest air strike on wanted Gaza militants.
One of the dead in the Rafah refugee camp was named as Amr Abu Sitta, commander of the Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Israeli military sources said Mr Sitta was behind hundreds of militant attacks, some deadly, on settlers and soldiers.
Zigzagging portions of the barrier have separated thousands of Palestinians from farmland, hospitals, schools, markets and West Bank cities.
This has raised an outcry abroad, with Israel being accused of ignoring human rights in erecting the barrier.
Deputy Defence Minister Mr Zeev Boim said shifted segments of the barrier, about 200 km (120 miles) of which have been built with another 400 km (250 miles) to go, could strip some settlements of adequate protection.
But two security columnists for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Mr Sharon's diplomatic troubleshooter Mr Dov Weisglass as telling a meeting of his barrier advisers that the changes were unavoidable if Israel was to head off a UN sanctions move.