It now appears that the anti-terrorist partition fence/wall will be re-routed to be almost adjacent to the Green Line throughout its length. The Green Line is that which separated Judea and Samaria from the rest of Israel between 1949 and the Six Day War of 1967.

Yuval Shteinitz, Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, responded sharply to the new route, which appears to be a result of the recent Supreme Court decision on the matter. The Court ruled that the interests of the hostile civilian Arab population override the safety of its own citizenry, and that the fence could not be built in a manner that would unduly harm Arab concerns.

Shteinitz said today, "The true significance of the new route is that we are giving up on critically important security regions in the area of the Jerusalem corridor, western Binyamin, and in areas that look out over the Tel Aviv area and Ben Gurion International Airport." The all-important Route 443, leading from Modiin to Jerusalem, will be partially excluded from the area covered by the fence, according to the new planned route.

"Paradoxically," Shteinitz said, "the Supreme Court decision to ban a fence governed by political/diplomatic considerations has led to the most political fence that can be imagined, as it reflects the Palestinian Authority position on where it wants Israel to withdraw to." He added that the decision to build the partition along the Green Line "negates Israeli Government positions throughout the years regarding the need for security zones in the permanent-status arrangement."