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00:00and a possibly disturbing development.
00:02It concerns a plan to create what have been described
00:04as gated communities, which will be patrolled
00:07by security guards within Gaza
00:08where Palestinians would live.
00:11Look a little bit closer,
00:12it seems these security guards are actual mercenaries.
00:14The community is less an elite development
00:16and more a place where the inhabitants are kept
00:18under the rules of the authorities.
00:21Scott Lucas joins us to analyze this.
00:22Scott's professor of US and international politics
00:25at the University of Dublin.
00:26Scott, thanks for being with us.
00:29How would you describe what we've just been talking about?
00:33Well, I think you can link two stories here
00:36because in fact, Israel, before the passage of this bill
00:41in the Knesset to effectively ban
00:43the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
00:46from assisting Palestinians,
00:48was considering the use of mercenaries to deliver aid
00:54or purportedly to deliver aid.
00:56These would be former British special forces
01:00working for a private Israeli company.
01:02Now we hear that these private contractors,
01:06mercenaries, if you will,
01:08are being considered to effectively set up,
01:13quote, security for, I think,
01:15what you might call token communities of Palestinians.
01:21So what we're seeing here is that Israel,
01:23which is now not only defying the international community,
01:27but trying to break the international community
01:29in terms of having any role in Gaza
01:32is outsourcing the notion of security.
01:37In other words, outsourcing the notion of control
01:41of these Palestinian communities and of aid,
01:43any aid that might get to these communities
01:46to private firms.
01:48Something we've seen before, by the way,
01:49with the United States and Iraq almost 20 years ago,
01:52the use of mercenaries for similar duties.
01:55It's clearly a big business opportunity too,
01:57a $200 million contract.
01:58Mordecai Kahane is quoted speaking
02:01about an Israeli-American businessman.
02:02He says that it'll be what they're trying to construct,
02:06similar to Miami, but without the pools
02:08and without the golf courses.
02:10That just sounds like a, well,
02:12just the tip of the iceberg
02:13in terms of telling the story, I think.
02:16Well, it's also a way of dehumanizing what's happening here
02:20because people in Miami might consent
02:24to having security firms in their neighborhoods,
02:28but they choose to live in Miami
02:30in conditions where they are not being bombed,
02:32where they are not being starved,
02:35where they have some control of their communities.
02:38These Palestinians would not have, of course,
02:40any control of their communities in Gaza.
02:43They would be at the mercy of Israel
02:45and at the mercy of these private security firms
02:48for getting any type of food,
02:50for getting shelter, for getting water.
02:52This, in other words, is an effective imprisonment,
02:56a continued imprisonment of Gazans.
02:58Remember, more than 85% of them,
03:01more than 1.9 million, are displaced from their homes.
03:03An imprisonment is just simply sticking
03:06the name private contractor on it
03:08rather than Israel Defense Forces.
03:10Some critics have described it
03:12as a program for internment camps.
03:16Others have gone a bit stronger
03:17and used the word concentration camp.
03:19Now, that is a very loaded term,
03:21but clearly this concept,
03:22and you've just, I think, just taken us to this point,
03:26it is really effectively keeping people
03:29perhaps against their will in a location
03:32with barriers, with armed patrols,
03:34because they will be.
03:36In a sense, it's criminalizing them
03:38before they've even committed a crime.
03:41Yeah, again, concentration camps precisely
03:43because it's such a political term
03:45with historical resonance.
03:45Let's just put that to the side
03:47and deal with the facts of what we're talking about here.
03:50What we are moving towards in Gaza,
03:52because this is an open-ended war.
03:54There's no foreseeable ceasefire after more than 13 months.
03:58There's no foreseeable alternative Palestinian government
04:01to Hamas.
04:03We are moving towards an Israeli occupation of Gaza.
04:06We've had that Israeli occupation
04:08of the West Bank since 1967.
04:11We now are having Israel, having left Gaza in 2005,
04:16going back in for an indefinite occupation.
04:19They're not doing it
04:20with a single government announcement.
04:22They're doing it step by step.
04:25And the use of the private contractors
04:27is a way to try to gloss over the fact
04:30that this is an occupation in which Palestinians,
04:34like those in the West Bank,
04:35are entirely at the mercy
04:37of what Israel decides they can and cannot do.
04:41And of course, the conflict is already perhaps
04:44creating a whole new generation of radicalized youngsters
04:47who are growing up seeing their homes destroyed.
04:51Would this be, presumably, another aspect of that?
04:55This would be actually serving to create more people
04:58who regard Israel as the ultimate enemy?
05:02Well, recognizing that the two countries are different,
05:05that the two cases are different,
05:06I just would ask your viewers to consider what happened
05:09when the United States outsourced
05:11some of these, quote, security functions
05:14to mercenaries in Iraq after the 2003 operations
05:20that removed Saddam Hussein from power.
05:22Those private contractors were targets for insurgents.
05:27Those private contractors killed not just insurgents,
05:31they killed Iraqis, because what you had was
05:34is you just had a different dimension
05:36of the war that took place,
05:38whereas this is not a direct military conflict
05:40that takes place.
05:41It is not Israel versus Hamas.
05:44It will be Israel and these private firms
05:46versus different groups, versus different coalitions
05:51of people who will be there to say
05:53that they do not accept that occupation
05:56and they will adopt violent means to resist it.
05:59This will, to adopt that word that you heard from the UN,
06:02this will metastasize into a deadlier conflict
06:06with a different dimension and with no end in sight.
06:09A recipe for more violence and chaos.
06:11Scott, thank you very much for joining us.
06:12Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics
06:16at the University of Dublin.
06:17Thank you for your time, sir,
06:18and thank you for your very measured analysis
06:20of the situation.