Israeli Court orders halt to work on wall

Israel’s Supreme Court today ordered the government to suspend work for one week on a section of the West Bank separation barrier around eight Palestinian villages north-west of Jerusalem, an attorney said.

The decision followed a bloody protest by residents against the barrier last week.

Israeli troops fired live ammunition at the crowd, killing two people in the first deadly protests against the barrier.

Meanwhile, Israeli security forces arrested three Palestinian youths in the West Bank who planned to carry out a suicide attack out of anger over the barrier, relatives said.

The youths, who were as young as 13, were among the youngest ever arrested for planning suicide attacks.

Parents of one of the boys expressed outrage that militant groups had recruited young boys for attacks.

In other developments, thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip attended the funerals of the three Islamic Jihad activists killed in an Israeli airstrike yesterday.

The Supreme Court issued its order in response to a request from the Popular Committee Against the Wall, a group of Israelis and Palestinians opposed to the barrier.

Some 30 Israelis from the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion joined the petition, organisers said.

Mohammed Dahla, a lawyer for the group, said the court ordered the suspension while the army re-examines the planned route of the barrier ahead of another hearing next week.

Court officials did not immediately comment.

The committee has asked the court to halt all construction in the area. It says the planned route of the barrier would effectively imprison 30,000 Palestinians in their towns and villages, cutting them off from Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian commercial capital.

Dahla said the group turned to the court after last week’s violence, in which Israeli security forces killed two Palestinian demonstrators among crowds trying to block bulldozers and construction crews.

Israel says it needs the barrier to prevent suicide bombers and other attackers from entering its towns and cities.

Palestinians say the partially built barrier – which is to dip deep into the West Bank in some areas – is a land grab meant to prevent them from establishing an independent state.

Last week, the Palestinians led a challenge to the legality of the barrier in the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands.

In addition Israeli opponents of the barrier have launched wider legal challenges to the structure.

Under international pressure, Israel has begun making small changes in the route of the barrier, which it says are to minimise hardship on the Palestinians.

In the West Bank, residents in the village of Tubas said Israeli troops had arrested three youths who were planning a suicide attack.

Mohammed Abu Mahsen said his 13-year-old son, Tarek, along with his friends, Jaffer Hussein, 13, and Ibrahim Suafta, 14, left a letter saying they planned to carry out a shooting attack at an Israeli military checkpoint or army base, he said.

“I want to carry out an attack against (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s fence. This fence, we will blow it up also, the Islamic Jihad youth movement,” Tarek wrote.

“We want you to give out candies and don’t cry for us and hold a big demonstration,” he added, referring to traditional salutes given to “martyrs” who die for the Palestinian cause.

The younger boys claimed to be members of Islamic Jihad, while Suafta said he belonged to the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, family members said.

Tarek’s parents were outraged and criticised Islamic Jihad for conscripting such young boys to their ranks.

Most suicide bombers have been in their 20s. The youngest was 16 years old.

Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the youths were arrested last Thursday at a West Bank checkpoint while carrying “improvised” firearms.

The boys, who he said were ages 13 to 15, had confessed to planning an attack in the Israeli town of Afula.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian sources said a 23-year-old member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’Brigades had been killed in a gunfight with Israeli troops in the Balata refugee camp.

The army said troops had shot two gunmen after coming under fire, but had no information on the conditions of the gunmen.

In Gaza, thousands of people participated in the funerals for the three men killed in yesterday’s airstrike.

They were identified as Mahmoud Judah, a field commander of Islamic Jihad’s military wing, militant Ayman Dahdouh and Dahdouh’s cousin, Amin, a group supporter.

Two of the bodies were decapitated in the attack.

In Gaza City, the coffins of the Dahdouhs were covered in black Islamic Jihad flags. Leaders of the group joined the procession, as angry militants fired machine-guns into the air and others shouted out for revenge over loudspeakers.

“We promise Sharon that our retaliation is coming soon,” said a masked militant.

Thousands of people attended Judah’s funeral in the Jabaliya refugee camp. About 10 participants wore the white robes of militants preparing to carry out suicide attacks.