Isn't that what Reagan would have said?
Tear down this APARTHEID WALL!
"Court orders new route for barrier; Rare legal victory for activists after frequent protests" by Scott Wilson/Washington Post September 5, 2007
GAZA CITY - Israel's high court ordered the military yesterday to reroute the separation barrier near the West Bank village of Bilin, scene of sometimes rowdy weekly demonstrations that Israeli and Palestinian activists say helped bring about their rare legal victory.
The Israeli military has said the path of the 456-mile barrier was determined by security considerations. A sharp reduction in suicide bombings inside Israel in recent years is in part attributable to the $2.5 billion construction project, according to the military.
The barrier's opponents say it is primarily an Israeli tool to annex Palestinian land in the absence of a peace agreement. The route, as drawn, sweeps 10 percent of the West Bank onto the Israeli side of the barrier, including more than half of Bilin's land.
The Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit has been planning to build a new neighborhood on some of the land in Bilin on the Israeli side of the barrier. But the three-justice panel ruled that the 24-foot-high wall that splits Bilin, which is set among olive groves northwest of Jerusalem, should follow a course that takes less of its land.
Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in the unanimous decision:
"We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bilin's lands."
The ruling, one of only a handful that have gone against Israel's military in more than 100 cases challenging the barrier, noted that "this will require destroying the existing fence in certain places and building a new one." It gives Israel's government a "reasonable period of time" to comply.
The village of roughly 1,700 residents, most of whom rely on their farmland to make a living, has been the scene of regular Friday demonstrations. The protests draw Israelis, Palestinians, and international opponents of the barrier, and often end in teargas-shrouded clashes with Israeli police and soldiers.
Jonathan Pollak, an organizer with the group Anarchists Against the Wall:
"The fact the justices even agreed to hear this case is attributable to the struggle. It's a great political victory for the popular movement. When people unite, they have power over Israeli institutions, whether it's the army or the courts."
But Pollack said the proposed alternative routes for the wall near Bilin all remain within the West Bank instead of along the boundary with Israel that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
A 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague declared the barrier illegal because it did not follow that pre-war boundary, a decision Israeli officials said ignored the Jewish state's security concerns.
Israeli political leaders, meanwhile, proposed increasingly harsh measures yesterday to stop steady rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Seven rockets landed in the Israeli town of Sderot Monday on the second day of the school year. Although no one was injured, one rocket landed close to a day care center, terrifying more than a dozen children and their parents.
[Awwww, poor Jews!
Never mind the Palestinians who are SUFFERING EVERY DAY under the occupation of the shitstink state!]
The group that asserted responsibility, the Islamic Jihad, said the attack was a reprisal for the death last week of three Palestinian cousins, ages 10 to 12, in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The children were playing tag near an Islamic Jihad rocket launcher when an Israeli air strike killed them. The Israeli military later characterized the attack as a mistake.
[Except that there WAS NO ROCKET LAUNCHER, and I quote "Eyewitnesses and medical sources said that there were no gunmen or rocket launchers at the scene."
LYING FUCKING SHITSTINKING ZIONIST ORGAN!
See how the lies are repeated and repeated as truth by these lying shitters!]
Several Israeli Cabinet ministers said that until the rocket fire stops, Israel should cut off water, electricity, and fuel deliveries to the strip, whose 1.4 million residents depend on imports for their most basic needs. Israeli military officials said about 100 of the highly inaccurate rockets landed inside Israel in August.
[Nothing like COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT by the shitstink state to ADD to the LIST of WAR CRIMES against that ABOMINABLE nation known as Israel]
"Israeli Court Orders Barrier Rerouted" by ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM, Sept. 4 — In its latest decision overruling Israel’s influential security establishment, the High Court of Justice here on Tuesday ordered the government to reroute a section of its separation barrier that had split a West Bank village from much of its farmland.
Although this is not the first time that Israel’s High Court has ruled in the Palestinians’ favor in a case about the barrier, this case has taken on a special significance as a symbol of popular resistance to construction of the barrier. In the past two and a half years, residents of the village, Bilin, and a band of Israeli far-leftists and foreign supporters have held weekly demonstrations in the fields and groves along the barrier route, often ending in confrontations with Israeli forces.
[See how the Times slants the articles in such a pro-Zionist way?
That's why they suck!]
The panel of three judges ruled unanimously that a mile-long section of the barrier should be redrawn and rebuilt in a “reasonable period of time.” Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in the ruling:
“We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bilin’s lands.”
The Defense Ministry, which oversees the planning and construction of the barrier, said it would “study the ruling and respect it.”
Israel began building the barrier on the West Bank in 2002, with the stated purpose of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli population centers. Made mostly of chain-link fence, the barrier includes sections of tall concrete wall. Much of the barrier runs through West Bank land, sometimes protruding for several miles to encompass a Jewish settlement.
The military planners say the 425-mile route is based purely on security considerations, but the Palestinians dispute that, accusing Israel of a land grab. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a nonbinding ruling that construction of the barrier across the 1967 boundary, in West Bank territory, violated international law. Israel rejected the ruling, but in the years since it has altered several segments of the barrier route after rulings by its own courts.
[There goes the shitstink state!
VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW, then UNILATERALLY REJECTING IT, as if that stinkfuck shitband of arrogant liars is ABOVE the LAW!
Well, fuck the shitstink state.
Will BE HAPPY WHEN the Zionist regime has VANISHED FROM THE PAGE OF TIME!!!
Soon now!!!!]
About two years ago, the local council leader of Bilin, Ahmed Issa Abdullah Yassin, hired a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard, to petition the High Court on his behalf. Mr. Sfard said the fence put about 500 acres of the village’s agricultural lands on the side under full Israeli control. The villagers had only limited access, through a gate in the fence which the Israeli Army opened and closed.
The government contended that the current barrier route was necessary to protect the residents of a nearby Jewish settlement, Modiin Illit. But the barrier lies more than a mile east of the last houses of the settlement, the court ruling said; its route had taken the planned expansion of the settlement into account, encompassing an area where a new Jewish neighborhood, Mattityahu East B, was meant to go up.
[It NEVER ENDS, does it? The land-stealing, I mean.]
While all Jewish settlement in the West Bank, including expansion, is viewed as illegal by most of the world, Israel holds that the West Bank is disputed territory and that building there is legal. But even in Israel, some earlier construction in the Mattityahu East area is deemed problematic, because it was done without the required building permits.
[God-damn fucking land-stealing, law-breaking scum!!!!!]
The ruling stipulates that in rerouting the Bilin section of the barrier, Israeli plans for Mattityahu East B should not be a consideration, meaning that the area is likely to end up on the villagers’ side. In the assessment of Mr. Sfard, the lawyer, the ruling will translate into the return of at least 250 acres of farmland to the villagers’ side.
Mr. Sfard told Israel Radio: “Today it becomes completely clear that the route was determined by nonsecurity considerations with the goal of expanding the settlement of Modiin Illit as much as possible. The High Court invalidated this criterion.”
Bilin, with about 1,700 residents, had declared its campaign against the barrier one of nonviolent resistance, but the weekly demonstrations often ended with protesters throwing stones and Israeli forces firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Each side said the other had provoked it.
[I know whom I BELIEVE, and it is not some shitstink spokesman for a shitstink state!]
As news of the court ruling reached Bilin, jubilant villagers headed toward the fence.
Abdullah Abu Rahma, one of the leaders of the weekly protests, told The Associated Press:
“We went to court, hired the best lawyers in Israel, and we won.”
Mr. Yassin, the council leader, hailed the ruling as a “victory.”
Jonathan Pollack, of Anarchists Against the Wall, an Israeli group that participated in the protests, said the decision “proved that the people, when they choose to act, have the power over Israeli institutions.”
The High Court has often avoided domestically contentious issues, like the legality of the settlements, but when it comes to the barrier, which enjoys broad support among the Israeli public, it has often gone against the defense establishment.
[Really, Times? Like it is even-handed, 50-50 decisions being handed down, huh?
Even though "only a handful that have gone against Israel's military in more than 100 cases?"
WTF is with the stinkfuck New York Times and its SHIT REPORTING?!
In a landmark judgment in 2004, a week before The Hague ruling was announced, the High Court ordered the state to bring a 25-mile section of the barrier in the West Bank hills northeast of Jerusalem closer to the 1967 boundary, on grounds that the original route caused disproportionate harm to the rights of Palestinian villagers in the area.
But the Israeli court has upheld the principle of building the barrier in West Bank territory given convincing security reasons, and rules on a case-by-case basis. Last Wednesday, the High Court rejected a petition by Palestinian villagers against the barrier route near the Alfei Menashe Jewish settlement. The Palestinians had wanted the barrier moved closer to the 1967 boundary, and away from their homes.
The same day, the court rejected a petition by Alfei Menashe residents who had wanted the barrier moved farther from their settlement, into the West Bank land."
[That's the N.Y. Times for you: NO CONTEXT!]
