Israel to reroute barrier closer to Green Line

ISRAEL will reroute its West Bank barrier closer to the boundary of the occupied territory under a court order that Palestinians must not be cut off from their lands, the project's administrator said yesterday.

It was the first confirmation of leaks from security sources that the barrier, which the World Court and UN General Assembly have branded illegal and said should be dismantled, would in future run nearer to the "Green Line" frontier.

Senior political sources said the route revisions made by Defence Ministry planners would be presented to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon next week for final approval. Israel bills the barrier as its bulwark against infiltrating Palestinian suicide bombers.

However, previously planned or built sections snake into the West Bank to encompass Jewish settlement blocs Israel vows never to cede under any peace accord with Palestinians.

Palestinians condemn the network of razor-tipped fencing and concrete walls as a precursor to Israel annexing land it took in the 1967 Middle East war and denying them a viable state promised by a United States-backed "road map" peace plan.

In a precedent-setting decision on a Palestinian appeal last month, Israel's High Court ordered an 18-mile section moved to ease hardship on Palestinians. However, it said Israel may erect a "security" barrier on land it considers "disputed".

"In the framework of the changes spurred by the High Court ruling, when the new maps are published they will show movement toward the Green Line, although not right on the Green Line," Netzah Mashiah, the head of the Defence Ministry's barrier administration, said on Israel Radio. With the "road map" process stalled by persistent violence, Mr Sharon aims to "disengage" Israel from the Palestinians by evacuating all 8,000 settlers from occupied Gaza next year and a few hundred among the 230,000 in the much larger West Bank.

Mr Sharon is committed to smashing Palestinian militant groups in the meantime in order to prevent them claiming victory in a settler exodus.

Meanwhile, yesterday, missiles killed two Palestinians in their car in Israel's latest air strike on wanted militants.

One of the dead in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp was identified as the leader of the Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.