Israeli High Court of Justice orders relocation of a part of wall
Highest court recognizes that the wall's current position had been determined not by security reasons, but to encompass plans for a settlement's industrial area.
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) Five kilometres of the Israeli "dividing wall" will have to be dismantled and moved, because its current position makes life difficult for two Palestinian villages, Azun and Nebi Elias, and seems to have been built more with expansion than with security reasons in mind. This according to the Israeli High Court of Justice that has thus once again ruled against a piece of the "wall."
The stretch of wall, which must be dismantled within six months, goes around the Tzufin settlement, located two kilometres within the West Bank border, near the city of Qalqiliya.
Judges accepted the petition against the wall's placement, which had been filed by Palestinian villages in the area and by the HaMoked Center for the Defence of the Individual.
Judges Aharon Barak, Dorit Beinisch and Ayala Procaccia also severely criticized the state, recalling that an earlier petition, presented in 2002, had been rejectged because authorities had claimed that the wall's route had been determined by security considerations. A new petition was presented in 2005, after petitioners obtained documents proving that the route had been selected so as to encompass the settlement's future industrial zone, the construction of which had not yet been approved.
The state was also ordered to pay the petitioners' court costs of 50,000 shekels (approximately $US 11,000).
A statement from Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that the High Court essentially ruled "that the state lied when it claimed that the fence route is based only on security considerations." Furthermore, the verdict "necessitates renewed hearings on all the petitions that were rejected based on those same considerations." B'Tselem and Bimkom, another group, "have uncovered 11 other cases in which the fence route was decided upon in order to expand settlements."
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14/07/2005
