The separation fence east of the settlement of Tzofin, near the Palestinian villages of Azun and Nebi Elias, must be dismantled within six months, after an alternative fence is erected along a route closer to the settlement, the High Court of Justice ruled Thursday.
Justices Aharon Barak, Dorit Beinisch and Ayala Procaccia thereby accepted a petition against the current route filed by HaMoked - the Center for the Defense of the Individual and the mayors of Palestinian villages in the area.
The justices also severely criticized the state for concealing in earlier High Court hearings that the existing route was determined partly by a master plan for expanding the settlement, and not solely on security considerations, as it had claimed.
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The petition was originally filed in 2002, but was thrown out after the state argued that the route was determined by security considerations. A renewed petition was submitted in 2005, after the petitioners obtained documents proving that the route had been selected so as to encompass the settlement's future industrial zone, whose construction had not yet even been approved.
"In the petition before us, a grave phenomenon was discovered," wrote Barak.
"The court was not presented with the complete picture in the first petition. The petition before us indicates an incident that is unacceptable, in which the information furnished to the court did not reflect the complete considerations facing the decision-makers. As a result, a petition was rejected that even the state now agrees should have been accepted," he added.
The court noted that as soon as the prosecution found out from defense officials about the additional consideration that had influenced the route selection, the state acted of its own accord to build a new, less damaging fence segment in the area.
However, the justices ordered the state to complete the new segment, spanning 1,350 meters, as quickly as possible, and to dismantle the existing fence within six months after the new segment is complete.
In a rare move, the state was also ordered to pay the petitioners' court costs of NIS 50,000.
A statement from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said: "The High Court essentially ruled that the state lied when it claimed that the fence route is based only on security considerations. The verdict necessitates renewed hearings on all the petitions that were rejected based on those same considerations."
"B'Tselem and Bimkom [another organization] have uncovered 11 other cases in which the fence route was decided upon in order to expand settlements, even at the expense of its effectiveness from a security standpoint," the statement read.
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