210. Why didn’t Israel build the fence on the Green Line? Is it true that the fence is illegal?

The fence runs on parts of the Green Line, but it is not built exactly above it. The Israeli argument is that the fence and the Green Line are not borders, therefore their location depends on their effectiveness in defending civilians. Considering that the armistice line (1949-1967) was not, nor was it ever, a border (it was “politically” declared in December 2016), the construction of the fence in territories under dispute is logical. Palestinians who consider that the location of the fence violates their rights can sue Israel in Israeli courts to modify the tracing. On more than 60 occasions the Israeli army has been forced to modify the layout. The Palestinians rejected the construction stating that its layout surrounded cities and cultivated fields, and obstructed their mobility. For the Palestinians, one of the main problems was that their economy was sustained on the penetration of illegal workers to Israel, so the fence became an obstacle for the free passage of Palestinians. In 2004, the International Court of Justice of The Hague discussed the topic. The revision was taken to the General Assembly, although 22 western democratic countries rejected the right of the Court to judge a “political” issue, and not a legal one. The Court of Justice of The Hague said that the land of the West Bank was not Israeli territory (they disregarded the autonomy set in Oslo A-B), and therefore Israel did not have the right to establish a defensive fence in “its own territory”. This is an advisory resolution and lacks legal force. The sentence was harshly criticized by the western democracies, as it determines that a country cannot build an internal security fence if it were to need one. This was interfering with the sovereignty of a country.