WEST BANK Barrier route revised to comply with ruling

The Israeli Supreme Court had said the section violated Palestinian rights.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A new route for Israel's West Bank barrier will bring it closer to the 1967 boundary, but the structure will still jut deep into the occupied territory in some areas, a Defense Ministry official said today.
Nezah Mashiah, head of the barrier project in the Defense Ministry, told Israel Radio the new route would put the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Etzion on the "Israeli side" of the contentious barrier. Gush Etzion -- home to 40,000 Israelis -- is about six miles southeast of Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, three Palestinians were killed in fresh violence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants in Gaza also fired two homemade rockets at an Israeli town, despite a 6-week-old military operation meant to prevent such attacks. No one was injured in the attack.
Mashiah said the Defense Ministry's new map is meant to comply with an Israeli Supreme Court ruling last month, which found that a 20-mile section of the barrier near Jerusalem violated Palestinian rights and international law.
Other sections affected
The Supreme Court said its ruling would apply to other sections of the 425-mile barrier. One-quarter of the structure has been built.
"Within the framework of changes following the Supreme Court decision, there is certainly movement in the direction of the Green Line," Mashiah said, referring to the Israel-West Bank boundary until the 1967 Mideast war.
The fate of two other large West Bank settlements -- Maale Adumim and Ariel -- has not been determined yet, Mashiah said.
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot quoted Dov Weisglass, a top adviser of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, today as telling a meeting Wednesday with Defense Ministry officials that there was "no choice but to relocate the fence to the Green Line."
"In no way, shape, or form is this a fence that will run along the Green Line," Mashiah said.
International rulings
Earlier this month the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, handed down a nonbinding advisory opinion declaring the entire barrier illegal and saying it should be torn down.
Israel says it will ignore that ruling and a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on it carry out the court's decision.
In some areas the original route of the barrier cuts deep into the West Bank, blocking Palestinians from their farmlands, schools, workplaces and nearby towns and villages.
Palestinians charge that the barrier's route is meant to prevent them from establishing an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Israel says the barrier is necessary to prevent Palestinian militants from attacking its towns and cities.