The route of the West Bank separation wall is a clear violation of international law and must be moved to inside Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said Thursday.
The statement was presented to the Israeli High Court of Justice ahead of a discussion scheduled for Monday on a number of petitions on the issue of the wall.
ACRI lawyer Limor Yehuda, is representing the residents of the villages of Budrous and Shuqaba. .
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The state prosecutor, upon the court’s request, has presented a 150-page document explaining the state’s stand on the International Court of justice ruling on the wall route, claiming that the ‘factual basis’ presented to the ICJ was ‘thin, lacking, generalized, inaccurate and unbalanced.’
The state also claims that the Hague court’s decision ‘does not have any binding legal validity’ and thus should not be admissible during the High Court of Justice’s hearing on the fence.
ACRI states in response that ‘the Hague court is the highest international judicial authority and serves as a body that is authorized to interpret and determine what international law is and thus its ruling [on the wall] is binding.’
ACRI also states that even after the changes were made to the route of the fence, following rulings by the High Court of Justice, the vast majority of the wall is still outside Israel’s sovereign borders..
ACRI goes in further by saying that the state has admitted that the wall ‘intrudes’ on the West Bank so as to keep settlements on the ‘Israeli’ side of the wall.
‘This fact validates the ICJ’s ruling that the wall was meant to create a territorial contiguity between Israel and the settlements and is a clear infraction of international law that cannot be justified under any circumstances’ ACRI explained..
