'Security Fence' is Legal, Says Israeli Court

Israel's highest court ruled today that the country had the right to build its "security fence" on occupied land, rejecting an earlier decision that the wall was entirely illegal.

But the court also ruled that the government must consider re-routing part of the barrier, which runs roughly along the border of the northern section of the West Bank. Sections fencing in the rest of the territory are under construction and may be finished by the end of the year.

The ruling by Israel's High Court of Justice follows complaints from Palestinian villagers cut off by the barrier from the education, medical and economic services of the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya.

The court ordered Israel to demolish the sections of the fence surrounding the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe and rebuild them closer to the settlement itself, returning the Palestinian villages to the West Bank side of the fence.

The barrier - in rural areas a steel and barbed wire fence, but in and around Jerusalem an eight-metre-high (26ft) slab of concrete - is justified by Israel on security grounds, but Palestinians complain that it cuts them off from families, jobs and land, and that it is forming a de facto national border which eats into their territory.

The barrier is built on the Palestinian side of the border and its route often cuts into Palestinian territory to keep Israeli settlements on the Israel side.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the barrier violated Palestinian rights and should be demolished. But the Israeli high court said today that the international body had failed to sufficiently consider Israel's security needs.

The nine-judge Israeli panel said that the ICJ had only considered "the injury to the rights of the Palestinian residents" in its ruling, and had not taken into account the importance of the barrier for preventing Palestinian militants from attacking Israel.

Amos Yaron, the outgoing director-general of the Israeli defence ministry, told the Jerusalem Post today that "all of the fence", running along the entire West Bank-Israeli border, would be "completely finished by the end of this year - in other words, in another three or four months".

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, after the six-day war of 1967. The occupation of Gaza ended this week.