Washington – Israel’s High Court of Justice issued Sunday a show cause order requiring the state to justify its plan to continue building its separation barrier through the Palestinian village of Wallaja, the Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

An Israeli soldier and a young Palestinian boy at the separation barrier, which manifests as a 35-foot wall at several points along the Israeli border with the West Bank. [WikiMedia Commons]

The state was challenged to prove the 2006 land seizure order for the wall was still valid, though construction on the wall had not yet begun, as well as the justification that the wall’s planned route could not be changed.

The petition was brought to the court by the village council of Wallaja, which lies southwest of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality says the village falls within the city limits.

Giath Nassir represented the village’s claims. He argued that the land seizure order had expired since it was first issued, and so the wall could not now be built. The petitioners also argued that the proposed path of the separation barrier would hem in their village on three sides, would cut them off from their agricultural lands and would leave them only access to the West Bank.

“The route is a scandal,” he was quoted as telling the three judges hearing the case. “It cannot stand.” The planned barrier would be so close to houses that it would leave villagers “no room to breathe.”

Nassir continued, saying the path for the barrier had been decided before a 2002 High Court decision saying the path of the wall had to take into consideration human rights concerns, as well as Israeli security, JPost said.

The representative for the state, Hani Ofek, rejected the assertions that the state could no longer legally build. Since the land seizure had been issued four years prior to the current suit, and the path had already been approved, the wall should be allowed to continue construction, Ofek argued. In addition, the land seizure order had already undergone judicial approval, she said.

Ofek also argued that construction had begun on the wall in 2006, following the land seizure order, but had ceased during the Second Lebanon War in 2008.

Ofek said the villagers had filed their suit too late, only making a complaint once they saw that the construction was to begin again.

But the petitioners said they had believed the work order expired, and as such no longer a worry. It was only when the bulldozers arrived that they felt a need to take legal action, they argued.

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