ISRAEL Supreme court orders barrier route changes

Route's current location endangers the Israeli population.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli Supreme Court ordered changes today in the route of the country's West Bank separation barrier, saying the current route is causing too much harm to the local Palestinian population.
The court said the changes must be made, even at the risk of reducing Israeli security. The decision dealt a setback to Israel's defense establishment.
Israel says the barrier is needed to block Palestinian suicide bombers from the West Bank. Palestinians have said the complex of fences, trenches and razor wire is a land grab.
The construction dips deep into the West Bank in some areas and has disrupted the lives of thousands of Palestinians. About a quarter of the 425-mile barrier has been completed.
Dangers
"The route disrupts the delicate balance between the obligation of the military commander to preserve security and his obligation to provide for the needs of the local inhabitants," the ruling said.
"The route ... injures the local inhabitants in a severe and acute way while violating their rights under humanitarian and international law," it said.
Today's case focused on a 25-mile stretch of the barrier northwest of Jerusalem. But the case was seen as setting a precedent for other challenges to the barrier.
"To have the chief justice of the supreme court say you can't put the Palestinians in prison ... in the name of the security of Israel, that is really important. That is the least I can say," said Mohammed Dahla, a lawyer for the petitioners.
Dahla said the section near Jerusalem would disrupt the lives of 45,000 people living in 10 villages, cutting them off from their farmland, schools and jobs.
The ruling said the route had "severely violated" the local population's freedom of movement and "severely impaired" their livelihoods.
Dany Tirza, the army's chief planner of the route of the barrier, said the decision would delay construction "certainly by many months."
He said everything would return to its original condition and that Palestinians will receive compensation for their losses.
Other areas
Brig. Gen. Eran Ofir, the head of logistics in the army, hinted that the ruling could affect other areas of construction.
"In regards to other areas, we will have to consider after checking the ruling and then act accordingly," Ofir said.
The court froze construction of the section near Jerusalem in late February, shortly after construction began.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops encircled the Palestinian border town Beit Hanoun with tanks and tore up roads in new efforts to stop a recent spate of rocket attacks on Israeli communities.
It was Israel's eighth major military operation in Beit Hanoun, and security officials said they expected it to be more devastating than previous raids that turned large farming areas into moonscapes, with thousands of trees uprooted.
The latest raid came in response to the first-ever deadly rocket attack from Gaza, in which an Israeli man and a 3-year-old boy were killed by a rocket in the border town of Sderot on Monday.