Israeli planners have redrawn the route of a planned barrier in the southern West Bank to avoid grabbing occupied land, De-fence minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday. Mofaz said a 60 km-long stretch of the barrier that was to have looped around several Jewish settlements south of 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, which it had planned to fence off from the rest of the West Bank. “But following High Court decisions, we had to plan anew along the Green Line.”

Israel’s High Court ordered a rerouting 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 -long barrier, of which some 200 km have been built, is aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.

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 US, 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. The Defence Ministry said there was no link between the work and Tuesday’s twin bus-bombings in the southern city of Beersheba, 13 km from the West Bank at its closest. The militant Hamas group claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Israeli officials have said the militants might have been stopped by the barrier, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice because it runs inside occupied land.

Mofaz, in his broadcast comments, said Hamas leaders have apparently quit Damascus following Israeli threats to target them for assassination in retaliation for the bus bombings.

Israeli officials said Syria bore some responsibility for the bus bombings for allowing Hamas to maintain a “terror headquarters” in Damascus. Syria dismissed the Israeli threats and accusations, saying they lacked proof and credibility.

<B>Jeffrey Heller</B>