19 June 2006: B'Tselem welcomes Defense Minister's order to reexamine Barrier's route

B'Tselem today wrote to the Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz, and commended him, on his decision to reexamine, in light of a High Court of Justice decision, the route of the separation barrier.

On 15 June, the High Court ordered the IDF to dismantle the eastern section of the fence surrounding the Tzofin settlement. In its decision, given on a petition filed by HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, the court, in a decision written by President Aharon Barak, stated that the previous petition on the particular section had been rejected because "the complete picture was not presented to the court" and "the Court rejected the petition on the basis of information, only part of which was well-founded."

The ruling requires reexamination of the rejected petitions that dealt with the use of the separation barrier to help in the expansion of settlements in other areas in the Occupied Territories .

B'Tselem attached a copy of the report it issued with Bimkom in December 2005, "Under the Guise of Security: Routing of the Separation Barrier to Enable the Expansion of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank."

The report examines twelve sections of the separation barrier. It showed that, contrary to contentions raised by the defense establishment, one of the considerations in setting the route was a desire to place land on the "Israeli" side for expansion of existing settlements or establishment of new settlements. The report also showed that, where security considerations were inconsistent with expansion of the settlements, the planners preferred expansion, even at the expense of security.

In setting the route, the planners caused greater violation of the human rights of Palestinian residents of the villages near these settlements than would have resulted had the route been based on protecting the settlements' existing boundaries.