Court considers proposal to slice off part of northern Jerusalem

August 3, 2005

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Palestinian petitioners said Wednesday that they recognized as "the least of all evils" a proposal to leave several Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem beyond the perimeter of the security fence currently being erected around the capital.

According to the proposal which was submitted by the Council for Peace and Security, an organization of retired senior security officials, the wall would omit a narrow strip of land in the northern part of the city along the old Jerusalem-Ramallah highway that includes the airport and industrial zone of Atarot, and the neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Shuafat.

The proposal has obvious political implications since it unilaterally leaves parts of Jerusalem that were annexed to Israel after the 1967 Six Day War outside the protected area of the city. It creates territorial contiguity between the Palestinian areas in the north, including Bir Naballah, A-Ram, Dahyat El-Barid, Beit Hanina and Shuafat.

A panel of nine justices has held several hearings on the petitions by ACRI and the A-Ram Municipal Council, represented by attorney Muhammad Dahleh, against the construction of the barrier that separates A-Ram from Jerusalem. The barrier in the Shuafat-Beit-Hanina-Atarot area cuts off the town of about 60,000 from Jerusalem, even though 65 percent of A-Ram's residents hold Israeli identity cards and have many connections to the city, including businesses, jobs, schools and medical facilities.

ACRI attorney Fatmeh El-Ajou told The Jerusalem Post she still insisted that no wall be built to separate A-Ram from Jerusalem. "Security should be provided by technological means, as IDF chief of General Staff Dan Halutz has said is possible," said Ajou. But she acknowledged that the court was unlikely to accept this option since the army insisted that the wall was the only effective security solution.

Meanwhile, the state brought to court OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh and Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Ilan Franco to stress the importance of completing the wall as quickly as possible. Naveh urged the court to revoke all the temporary injunctions it had issued against the construction of segments of the wall in the Jerusalem area.

"The fact that 60% of the fence has been built and 40% is not completed is not good enough," Naveh told the justices. "I ask the court to give special treatment to the Jerusalem wall by not issuing interim injunctions. We are at the crossroads between mediocre and very high operational effectiveness."

Naveh said that he had assigned an entire battalion to guard the breaches in the wall but that this was only 50% as effective as closing off the breaches with construction.

Supreme Court President Aharon Barak said at the end of the all-day hearing that he may still hold one more session before the court begins writing its decision.

SOURCE: Jerusalem Post