West Bank - Israel began rerouting part of its West Bank barrier near a flashpoint Palestinian village on Friday after a top court heard residents' complaints over land seizures for the controversial project. While Israeli surveyors prepared the new fence outside Bilin, Palestinians and foreign sympathisers demonstrated nearby, vowing not to abandon their fight against a barrier condemned internationally for taking in occupied territory. An Israeli official said the West Bank work was the culmination of a process begun with a High Court petition filed against the project in 2007 by local Palestinian landowners. That prompted a to-and-fro with Israel's Defense Ministry, which revised the route until an April 2009 version was accepted by the court, despite lingering objections from Bilin and from a neighboring Jewish settlement, Modiin Illit. "Construction work to measure and alter the security fence in Bilin began in accordance with the directives of the High Court of Justice," an Israeli army spokeswoman said. Israel credits the barrier -- a network of fences interspersed with concrete walls, projected to be 720 km (450 miles) long when complete -- with stemming Palestinian suicide bombings that peaked in 2002 and 2003. But Palestinians condemn the project for looping around settlement blocs in the West Bank, where they want to set up a state. With its weekly and often violent protests, Bilin has become a symbol of the struggle. "This is an achievement and a victory for the popular resistance, but this is not enough -- 2,300 dunam (575 acres) were confiscated from Bilin's land, 750 dunam (188 acres) were regained," said demonstrator Iyad Bornat about the rerouting. A non-binding ruling by the World Court in 2004, which Israel rejected, said the barrier was illegal. Israel says the project could be demolished altogether should peace prevail.
