TEL AVIV, Israel, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Israel's defense establishment has redrawn the route for the security barrier it is building in the West Bank bringing it closer to the pre-1967 armistice lines.
The defense establishment Monday presented the revised plan to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which later got into an argument over the settlement issue. Committee members accused officials of providing misleading information about the number of illegal outposts that have been removed.
The barrier's route was redrawn after Israel's High Court of Justice accepted Palestinian appeals against the original line.
A senior defense official told United Press International that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved the new route but it still requires Cabinet approval.
It is not clear when the Cabinet will discuss the revision.
According to the new plan, the barrier will run much closer to the old boundary line near the settlement of Elkana and the Israeli town of Rosh Haayin, east of Tel Aviv. It will also run closer to the pre-1967 lines northwest of Jerusalem.
Highway 443, the faster route from the coastal plain to Jerusalem that runs through the West Bank and has been the scene of attacks on Israeli motorists, will remain outside the barrier. However, concrete slabs will be placed on both sides to protect travelers from Palestinian gunfire.
Col. (retserve) Danny Tirza who presented the plans Monday said the original version would have left 8,500 acres of West Bank lands on the Israeli side of the barrier.
Under the revised plan 3,750 acres would be on the Israeli side. However, 2,250 acres of those lands are considered annexed, he said according to an authoritative source.
The change, Tirza continued, will delay completion by about a year.
The Israelis had begun work on 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the route that will be discarded. Restoring it to its earlier condition would cost NIS 25 million to 30 million ($5 million to $5.5 million).
The barrier was built to prevent Palestinians, especially suicide bombers, from entering Israel and the government maintained it has been very successful. The number of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks originating in the northern West Bank, where the barrier has been completed, dropped 70 percent, a Foreign Ministry report said.
Palestinians complaining of a land grab and that the barrier increased their hardships and cut them off their lands, had appealed to the High Court of Justice.
On June 30, the court ruled international law permits construction of a barrier for military necessity but the route "must take the needs of the local population into account."
It ordered "Proportionality as a standard for balancing the authority of the military commander in the area with the needs of the local population."
Ten days later the International Court of Justice at The Hague said in an advisory opinion that the barrier violates international law and impinges on the Palestinians right for self-determination. Israel should dismantle it and compensate the people harmed by it, according to the ruling.
Israeli officials insisted that only their court's ruling binds them.
However, a top-level inter-ministerial team last Thursday presented the Prime Minister's Office with an 84-page classified report analyzing the implications of the ICJ's opinion.
The paper, approved by Attorney General Menahem Mazuz, said the ICJ's ruling creates "a different legal reality" for Israel and could serve as a catalyst for anti-Israeli moves.
It therefore recommended Israel say it "respects" the ICJ's decision despite its misgivings. The committee recommended, also, "a maximum effort to adapt, as soon as possible ... the fence's route and arrangements ... in the seam zone to the principles the High Court of Justice has set."
Separately, following last week's government approval of 1,000 new houses in four settlements, the BBC reported Monday that Israeli officials said 300 additional new homes would be built in two settlements near Jerusalem. In addition, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported 200 more homes were to be built in the Adam and Emanuel settlements.
Also on Monday Brig. Gen. (reserves) Baruch Spiegel, Defense Minister Mofaz' liaison to the U.S. Embassy, told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee the government has removed 81 unauthorized settlements established in the West Bank since March 2001 when Sharon assumed power.
According to a participant in that meeting, Spiegel said 104 unauthorized outposts were established in the West Bank since March 2001 but 59 more were there when Sharon became prime minister.
A senior Defense official told UPI the vast majority of those sites were uninhabited and included barrels and damaged caravans.
The official said the number of the unauthorized outposts has just dropped since the authorities evacuated two uninhabited sites last week and decided that a third site was "just an antenna," not an outpost.
Spiegel's figures contradict those of Israel's Peace Now. According to Peace Now's settlement expert, Dror Etkes, 51 or 52 illegal outposts that were established since March 2001 are still there.
Etkes told UPI his count includes uninhabited sites where one might find two or three caravans. Often they are placed half a kilometer or more from existing settlements.
The Defense Ministry's figures are "a joke. They're making mockery of themselves," Etkes said.
Knesset Member Uri Ariel of the hard-line National Union who had headed the settler's Yesha Council told Israel Radio quite a few outposts were on the list of evacuated settlements, "Since nonsense was counted as well. In some places, there were two barrels, an iron pole and a flag and someone said it was an outpost."
However, Knesset Member Yossi Sarid of the dovish Yahad complained the Defense Ministry's information was false. "We're talking about lies," he charged.
"If one outpost was removed, two were established in its place," Sarid added. He said he advised Mofaz go anywhere he wants "to see, in the field, if there is any truth to what he says."
According to Israel Radio, he said only one significant inhabited outpost, Ginot Arye, has been evacuated. The settlers' leadership, not the defense establishment, evacuated the 16 families who had lived there, the radio reported.
Spiegel, who has been regularly meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, said he gave the Americans a list of the outposts.
Clearly there was no agreement. "The Americans have their own list," Spiegel told the committee, but the differences have narrowed.
A U.S. official confirmed there was no agreement. "We're working towards it," he said.
The embassy's spokesman Paul B. Patin told UPI, "Israel has promised to evacuate all the illegal outposts, and we are looking forward to Israel meeting its commitment."
