Aisling Byrne from Beirut on Palestine
Excerpt edited by Carolyn Bennett
A police state is not a state. It is a form of larceny: of people’s rights, aspirations and sacrifices, for the personal benefit of an élite.
When it called for statehood, this is not what the world meant.
A police state is what is being assiduously constructed in Palestine, disguised as state-building and good governance.
Under this guise, its intent is to facilitate the authoritarianism that creates sufficient popular dependency — and fear — to strangle any opposition.…
“This is the level to which statehood has descended. Full demilitarization — taken to the limit — has essentially become no more than occupation by another name. In the process, it has shut out any alternative attempts at nation building and the mobilization of the Palestinian nation under the umbrella of a reformed PLO. … Of course this is what the current paradigm has hoped to destroy.”
Writer Aisling Byrne is Projects Co-coordinator with Conflicts Forum in Beirut (www.conflictsforum.org)
http://conflictsforum.org/2011/building-a-police-state-in-palestine/
Full article appears at www.foreignpolicy.com
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