MIDDLE EAST: In a landmark ruling that will impact on construction of the controversial West Bank security barrier, Israel's Supreme Court yesterday ordered the government to reroute a 30-km section of the barrier north-west of Jerusalem, to reduce the harm it causes local Palestinians writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
The court said it accepted the security imperative behind construction of the 600-km barrier, being erected along the entire length of the West Bank, which the government says is designed to prevent access to sovereign Israeli territory by Palestinian suicide bombers.
But it ruled that the specific route selected by the planners, cutting into West Bank territory and separating farmers from their fields, workers from their jobs and children from their schools in many areas, constituted an unacceptable blow to Palestinians' rights under humanitarian and international law.
"The state must find an alternative that may give less security but would harm the local population less," ruled the three-judge panel, which was headed by the president of the Supreme Court, Mr Aharon Barak. "These alternative routes do exist."
The Israeli government said it would accept the ruling. Only about two kilometres of the fence have been constructed in the zone, but well over a quarter of the entire barrier has been built. If the court accepts similar appeals against the route to those it accepted yesterday, major sections may have to be dismantled and re-erected, with costs in the tens of millions of dollars and delays of many months.
The government had hoped to complete the barrier, whose construction has already contributed to a marked decline in infiltrations into Israel by suicide bombers from the West Bank in recent months, by the end of next year. In some sections, the barrier is a concrete wall rising eight metres; in most areas, it is a more complex and wider series of fences and patrol roads.
Prior to its construction, there was no physical barrier between Israel and the West Bank, and suicide bombers could, and did, make a simple journey of just a few minutes from cities such as Jenin and Tulkarm into major Israeli population centres. But support for the barrier in principle, both abroad and within Israel, has been diluted as sections have been routed far inside the West Bank, in what Palestinian and other critics have charged is a "land grab".
Israel's Justice Minister, Mr Yosef Lapid, praised the court's decision as both "justified" and "intelligent" and suggested it would benefit Israel ahead of an advisory ruling on the legality of the barrier, expected to go against Israel, which is due to be issued in about 10 days' time by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. "It proves that there is no need for outside intervention," Mr Lapid said. "We have our own court in Jerusalem with humane sensitivities."
If the ICJ rules that the barrier is illegal, because it is being largely constructed on West Bank territory rather than along the pre-1967 Israel-West Bank "Green Line" border, Arab states are likely to press for UN sanctions against Israel until it is dismantled.
Mr Mohammad Dahlah, a lawyer representing several of the appellants, hailed the decision as "more important than the one at The Hague because this one will be followed. To have the chief justice of the Supreme Court say you can't put the Palestinians in prison ... in the name of the security of Israel, that is really important," he said. "No one said Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself," he added. "If Israel had planned the route along the lines set out today by the Supreme Court," there would have been no problem.
However, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei was unmoved, and said he rejected the barrier wherever it was routed. "The wall is an act of aggression whether it remains as is, or they introduce changes in its route," he charged.
On the Israeli political right, critics censured the court for condemning more Israelis to die in bombings. "If a truck packed with explosives drives into Tel Aviv now, the Supreme Court will be to blame," said Dr Ilan Tsion, head of a pro-barrier lobby.
Mr Moshe Negbi, one of Israel's leading legal analysts, said the court had "not ignored Israeli security needs. Quite the reverse. It upheld them."