This morning, the High Court ordered the State to cancel a stretch of thirty kilometers of the planned route of the separation barrier in the Jerusalem area. The petition dealt with forty kilometers of the route in the area running from Maccabim to the Givat Ze'ev settlement.

The justices held that the planned route does not properly balance security considerations and the rights of Palestinians living in proximity to the barrier's path. The justices emphasized that the state must take into account international humanitarian law (the Hague Convention and the Forth Geneva Convention) and Israeli administrative law in determining the barrier's route.

The Court's decision testifies to the severe harm to Palestinians resulting from the planned route of the barrier. According to B'Tselem's figures, close to a million Palestinians will be harmed by construction of the barrier along the planned route.

The severe harm to the Palestinians is neither necessary nor legal, and results from the extraneous considerations that Israel took into account when setting the route. B'Tselem once again urges the Israeli government to tear down the sections of the separation barrier built within the Occupied Territories, and to refrain from building the sections that are planned for construction on the other side of the Green Line.