Is privatizing West Bank checkpoints step 1 in an Orwellian ‘economic peace’?

by on June 29, 2009 3
Rob Browne writes:
I just saw this article by Amira Hass in Haaretz on a private Israeli security firm
that is running a checkpoint and is implementing more severe restrictions on
food that can be brought into Israel than the IDF-run checkpoints–including even large water bottles.  The
checkpoint is at Sha'ar Efraim, south of Tul Karm, and is managed for
the Defense Ministry by the private security company Modi'in Ezrahi.

An additional surprise came later in the article:

 

MachsomWatch activists said a security guard on duty told them
the food restrictions were imposed due to "security and health risks."
However, at the nearby Qalqilyah checkpoint, which is still run
directly by the IDF, workers have been allowed to carry through all the
food items banned at Sha'ar Efraim.

However, responsibility
for the Qalqilyah checkpoint is supposed to be transferred to a private
company this week, and workers voiced concerns that similar
restrictions might be imposed there.

 
I wonder if we are watching the beginning of a
Bush-Cheney-Netanyahu neocon privatization scheme of the checkpoints
(a la Blackwater and Haliburton)?  If this happens, the rules for the
Palestinians may become even more harsh and arbitrary.  There also may
be less recourse for victims, since these guards may not be subject to
IDF rules.  I am concerned that this will also allow Israelis to be
even more removed from the troubles of the checkpoints, just as we, in
America, have been able to distance ourselves from the atrocities
committed by private soldiers.
 
If this is a sample of Netanyahu's neoconservative ideas at work,
one can only imagine the horrors that will occur if he actually
attempts to create an "economic peace" with the Palestinians.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israeli Government, Neocons, Settlers/Colonists

{ 3 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. patriot says:
    June 29, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Why not? A GI = a Hessian.

  2. DICKERSON3870 says:
    June 29, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    RE: "If this is a sample of Netanyahu's neoconservative ideas at work…" MY COMMENT: I read about plans for this long before Olmert resigned.

  3. ThorsProvoni says:
    June 29, 2009 at 11:11 pm

    From Nixon and Jewish Hate Politics:

    In general, application of Friedman's economic theory corresponds so closely with the arenda system[281] and with the history of Jewish exploitation in the Ukraine that it could be considered to be an expression of an epistemic culture associated not merely with Zionist politics but with Zionist politics hybridized with traditional Yiddish economics. Because the Friedmanite profiteers are so far away from the modern equivalent of potentially enraged Cossacks or ethnically cleansed Palestinians, Friedmanism is a far superior as a form of theft or brutal exploitation than either Zionism today or the arenda system in the seventeenth century Ukraine. The counter-Marxist Friedmanist concept of withering away the state by selling off its functions to private enterprise worked well with Nixon's southern strategy because it was a way for the Republican party to promise racially anxious whites a theoretically weaker federal government less inclined in the future to engage in civil rights activism like the 1970 decision of the IRS to remove the tax-exempt contribution status of Bob Jones University on account of the school's rules against interracial dating.

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