Israeli planners have redrawn the route of a planned barrier in the southern West Bank to avoid grabbing occupied land, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Monday.
Mofaz said a 60 km (35 mile)-long stretch of the barrier that was to have looped around several Jewish settlements south of the Palestinian city of Hebron would, under the revised plan, run along the "Green Line", or Israel-West Bank border.
"These settlements were to have been in our area," Mofaz told Army Radio, referring to land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which it had planned to fence off from the rest of the West Bank.
"But following High Court decisions, we had to plan a new line along the Green Line."
Israel's High Court ordered a re-routing of a section of the barrier in the central West Bank in June to minimise hardship to Palestinians, thousands of whom have already been cut off from schools, hospitals, relatives and farmland by the network of electronic fences and towering concrete walls.
The new route must still be approved by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet. Mofaz said perimeter security fences would be constructed around the southern settlements. Israel says the planned 600 km (360 mile)-long barrier, of which some 200 km (120 miles) have been built, is aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.
Palestinians call the project a land grab designed to deny them a viable state.
MOFAZ THREATENS ARAFAT: Mofaz, in the radio interview, renewed Israel's threat to remove Yasser Arafat but hinted that it had delayed taking action against the Palestinian president to avoid complicating a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
He said a security cabinet decision of a year ago to expel Arafat "is still valid today" and Israel would "find the way and right timing" to remove the veteran leader from the area.
Political sources, however, say such a move is all but impossible as long as the United States, Israel's main ally, strongly opposes it.
Israel and the United States have tried to sideline Arafat, accusing him of fomenting violence in a nearly four-year-old Palestinian uprising. Arafat, 75, the long-time symbol of Palestinian nationalism, has denied the allegations.
On Sunday, Israel began flattening land for the southern section of the barrier near Hebron, five days after Palestinian suicide bombers from the city killed 16 Israelis.