Summary
A registered society of Israelis with security backgrounds, including high-ranking reserve officers, which intervened by affidavit in the Beit Sourik case arguing on security grounds against the separation fence route chosen by the military commander (Beit Sourik Village Council v. Government of Israel, lines 370-390).
Details
- Its members named in the judgment: Major General (res.) Danny Rothchild, its president; Major General (res.) Avraham Adan (Bren); Commissioner (emeritus) Shaul Giv’oli, its general manager; and Colonel (res.) Yuval Dvir. Its first affidavit was signed by Adan, Giv’oli and Dvir (paragraph 17).
- The society sees itself as nonpartisan and says it was among the first to suggest a separation fence as a solution to Israel’s security needs (paragraph 17).
- Its position (affidavits joined as amici curiae by the parties’ stipulation, April 15 and April 18, 2004): the fence must obstruct and delay terrorist entry, warn the forces, and allow control, repair and monitoring; it must be far from Palestinian village houses, since proximity invites attacks on patrols, creates friction at gateways, and makes terrorists harder to distinguish from innocent inhabitants; it does not recommend following the Green Line and does not argue the commander’s considerations are political, disputing the route on security considerations themselves (paragraphs 18, 30).
- Segment positions in the later affidavits: on Jebel Muktam, effective light-weapon fire from the mountain on Route 443 or any Israeli town is not possible, a route three kilometers south adjacent to the Green Line would sit on controlling, defensible ground, and not every controlling hill is necessary (paragraph 54); at Har Adar, the fence should be integrated into the town’s existing fence (paragraph 64); for Beit Sourik and Bidu it proposed distancing the fence from the village’s east and west (paragraph 71); and its April 4, 2004 affidavit stated the Tav/109/03 route would leave inhabitants able to reach Ramallah only via a long and difficult road (paragraph 73).
- The Court declined to prefer the Council’s military opinion over the responsible commander’s, giving the commander’s opinion special weight (paragraphs 47, 56), but the alternates the Council presented supplied the comparison for the third, narrow-sense proportionality test on which the contested orders were nullified (paragraphs 61, 71, 76).
Related pages
Beit Sourik Village Council v. Government of Israel, Beit Sourik case, Moshe Kaplinsky, Separation wall