By Eilat Maoz

The beginning of the project of privatizing the checkpoints was the government decision taken in 2003, implemented, however, only in 2006. The project calls for the outsourcing of the security tasks of guarding the checkpoints and the security screening of all those passing through the checkpoints on the border between Israel and the territories. The process which is called "de-militarizing the border checkpoints" is being carried out at 48 checkpoints defined as "the final checkpoints before entering Israel", even though quite a few of them are actually beyond the green line, along the route marked by the separation wall. The privatization process is being spearheaded by a unique directorate in the Ministry of Defense called the Crossings Directorate. This directorate was established in September, 2005 by Shaul Mofaz, then Minister of Defense, in order that it coordinate the establishment of border crossings, their de-militarization and the upgrading of their technology. Reserve Duty Colonel Bezalel Treiber, a businessman from Beit Yehoshua who was in charge of mobilizing volunteers into reserve duty at the beginning of the second Intifada, has been placed at the head of this directorate. At least on the declarative level, the goal of the project is "to reduce the friction existing at the crossing points today and to increase the level of service, without decreasing the level of security screening. The checkpoints will be defined as official border crossings and will look just like terminals do elsewhere in the world."[1]

The meaning of outsourcing is that workers from private security companies replace IDF soldiers in carrying out the jobs of security screening and safeguarding the checkpoints. The private security companies that won the tenders for operating these checkpoints are Mikud Security, Ari Avtaha, S.B. Security Systems, Modi'in Ezrachi and Sheleg Lavan. Thus, the State is not the direct employer of the staff working at the crossing points. Each checkpoint has its own Security Officer, a paid employee of the Ministry of Defense, with full responsibility for the running of the checkpoint under his command. Representatives of the army, the police force and the Israel Airports Authority are also present, according to the crossing type, in addition to the private security officers and to the employees of the Crossings Directorate (the Israel Police Force and/or the Border Police at the checkpoints of the "Jerusalem envelope" and the Israel Airports Authority at the Gaza crosspoints). The authority awarded to the private security officers is done so according to the law "awarding authority for the keeping of public safety – 2005". The law regulates activities of security screening, security checks of both body and baggage and detainment of individuals suspected of being "a threat to the security of the public", all of which may be carried out lawfully, without a court order. According to this law, the authority awarded to soldiers on active duty, policemen, government-employed security officers and privately employed security officers is one and the same.

My claim herein is that in this case, where the checkpoints are privatized, privatization is a less obvious step than it may at first seem, and the rationale behind the process is at least as ideological-managerial, if not more so, than it is purely economic. Similarly, I will attempt to raise several new questions which arise because of the existence of the new checkpoints, which can teach us once again what we thought we already knew about the occupation. My point here is that in the background of this text we keep hearing the question of what happens to a country when, in keeping with its neo-liberal ideology, it privatizes the most oppressive of its mechanisms, and what happens to the occupation when its very logic becomes united with the logic of late capitalism? What I would like to ask is whether we can still talk about the occupation in the same way – irregular, unexpected, organized in its lack of organization, characterized by its arbitrariness, or whether we are now facing a new occupation, which needs to be resisted in new ways.

Between De-Militarization and Privatization:
The Neo Liberal Logic of the Project of Privatizing the Checkpoints 

"Demilitarization is an innocent way of saying privatization"[2]

The process of privatizing the checkpoints is only one part, relatively small in scope, within the plan to privatize both services and production within the Israeli National Security Agency (which include, among other things logistic storage, dissemination and acquisition layouts, vehicle maintenance, personal laundry, refueling services, camp security and instruction services). The first step of this large-scale move was taken in the Sadan Committee (1993), a government committee headed by Professor Israel Sadan, who was appointed by then Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Yitchak Rabin, with the aim of "aiding in the integration of the national security agency's policies in envisioning the national needs, especially when it comes to the implementation of those activities of production, rehabilitation and maintenance by the IDF, as compared to the carrying out of such activities by civilian industries."[3]

In June, 1994, as the committee completed its task, it recommended certain apportionment regulations as to the division of the implementation of labor between the IDF and the Security Industries. These regulations were meant "to balance between the safekeeping of the IDF's ability to maintain readiness and preparedness of the weaponry placed in its charge and the national need to maintain competition vis-à-vis the civilian market, as well as to ensure the existence of the civilian security industries".[4] In May, 1997, based on the recommendations of the Sadan Committee, the Ministry of Defense published a directive, the subject of which was "the implementation of services by the IDF, in competition with civilian industries". These directives were meant to create "fair competition between the IDF and the industry, on the basis of a common denominator and proper comparative facts, while including all of the costs of intramural expenditure, as well as an inclusive economic overview."[5]

However, although recommendations were made and procedures set up, almost nothing came about. But for a continuation of the purchasing of services, products and weapons from the United States, according to the security aid agreements, the IDF and the Ministry of Defense did little to facilitate meaningful privatization processes. Our information on this issue comes from the State Comptroller's Report from 2004, which contains scathing criticism concerning a lack of progress in these processes. According to this report, the IDF did not define tasks intended to bring about demilitarization, and joint IDF-Ministry of Defense committees which were meant to further the process stopped working before they presented a project design. This fits in well with the supposition that within the IDF and the Ministry of Defense there were pockets of organizational-institutional resistance to the processes of privatization of both tasks and industries. There are certain researchers who claim that the IDF's backing of the Sadan Committee was originally based on pressure brought to bear on the army.[6] Beyond the resistance which could arise, as mentioned, from the basic dynamics of organizations and institutions in order to maintain their potency, it is easy to get the impression that there is a lack of clarity as to the economic profit to be made from the processes of privatization. This is specifically mentioned in the comptroller's report and, thus, is worthy of being quoted in great detail:

  According to the Ministry of Defense, other domains reveal a certain inferiority in the area of industry: their production capacity may be interrupted during times of emergency, since their workers may be called up to active duty, while IDF industrial capacity can be seen as providing back-up for the low levels of maintenance; there is a fear that chance economic difficulties could cause industry to be unable to meet IDF deadlines; there are areas of activity in the IDF which have no competitive and developed civilian counterpart – something which could influence production prices, especially in the long run, and create dependence on a single distributor; outlaying tasks to industries involves processes of inspection and acquisition, which require resources of both time and money on the part of the Ministry of Defense; in addition, special activities on the part of the IDF involving control and follow-up are necessary, once the industries have met the commitments stemming from the demilitarizing agreements –activities which also cost money…in the intramural expenditure processes within the IDF specific estimations are made, the major ones being: manpower, property and capital assets. At a time when industry is calculating these estimations according to their actual value, according to their market value, the IDF, as a rule, does not gauge the estimations used in the execution of its tasks according to economic prices. Thus, for example, the cost of soldiers in compulsory service who take part in industrial processes in the IDF logistic organizations is usually assessed, in its own calculations, as zero; that is because of the reality in which the State allows the IDF to use this resource, by law, with no compensation whatsoever. As a result, a situation results in which an economic advantage is extended to the IDF, over production in other industry, due to intramural expenditure, especially in processes wherein abundant compulsory-service manpower is required.[7]  

What economic advantage could thus be concealed in the privatization of manpower at the privatized checkpoints? Perhaps there is none?[ 8] Therefore, it is not surprising to discover that although the decision to privatize the checkpoints was taken at the government level in 2003, the State Comptroller's Report from August 2005 states that "There has been an ongoing delay in the process of setting up some of the crossings along the border area and in the process of demilitarizing the checkpoints; this delay has stemmed particularly from a disagreement between the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Transportation as to the apportionment of responsibility in the building of these crossings and disagreements between these ministries and the Ministry of Finance as to the source of the financing necessary for their construction, operation and maintenance."[9]

From what we see here, it seems that the potential for economic profit for the state from the privatization of the checkpoints is secondary, if not completely cancelled out, as a major consideration in the argument for privatization. In the process of privatization one can see the product of a neo-liberal executive discourse which sees privatization as a process which increases organizational efficiency – beforehand and in any case – without the need to economically justify the move rationally (even within the framework of a neo-liberal economic rationality). There is no need to explain how the activity will become more efficient once the privatization takes place, since efficiency is seen, from the onset, as the necessary result of the privatization process.

As Ofer Hindi says," I am from the Central Command. As has been stated, 31 or 32 checkpoints have been built along the border area and in the Jerusalem envelope, but one must remember that, except for 4 demilitarized crossings, these are now being manned by IDF soldiers, who do not have a service consciousness. In addition to building a beautiful crossing point, you have to put a person there who knows how to serve the public. The IDF is not structured to give this service. The IDF is doing its best – it has set up two crossings-regiments which immediately learned how best to serve the public in these capacities, but the crossing points are still manned by soldiers.[10] "

As we can see, the increasing efficiency is not being measured in terms of the economy and security; rather, in terms that seem entirely foreign to the reality of the occupation: aesthetics and customer service. It is interesting to discover that the principle of service constitutes a key principle among the managerial tenets adopted by the IDF when it accepted the doctrine of TQM (Total Quality Management) at the beginning of the 1990's, a managerial norm developed in the 1950's in the United States and implemented in private American companies all over the world, especially in Japan. The IDF is the first army in the world to adopt this managerial system and has adapted it to the organizational reality of an army. This attitude goes together with the outlook which motivates what is referred to as "the IDF's managerial revolution", which began when Dan Shomron was Chief of Staff (1989 - 1991[11]), the same Dan Shomron who coined the phrase, the "small, smart army". The meaning of the phrase, in this context, is that the organization (the IDF) will decrease the activities and missions it does not define as emanating from its very essence and goals as much as possible; for example, projects with a social-national orientation and those meant to recruit soldiers to the army.

Therefore, although it is quite clear why the social projects that the army took on in the past, such as creating the Makam Program (The Center for the Promotion of Unique Populations, known as the "Raful Youth" Project) or the training and employment of female soldier-teachers, are not at the top of the army's priority list today, and it is easy to understand why, under certain circumstances, purchasing services and merchandise from the private sector would be more efficient, economically and organizationally, it is harder to understand how the policing and security-screening task at the checkpoints falls into the category outside "the core activity" of the army. As mentioned above, it is very difficult to find any immediate economic logic whatsoever in the privatization process, in light of the fact that the cost of employing a soldier in compulsory service is substantially lower than that of employing a private security guard.


Reduction of Friction: The Checkpoint as the Brutal Face of the Israeli Occupation

In August, 2004, The Spiegel Report was published. This was the report published by a special committee, headed by Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, whose purpose was to examine what was happening at the checkpoints. The committee made a series of recommendations, all touching upon the issue of friction – friction is that necessary reality which exists at the checkpoints and is something that must regularly and consciously be reduced. The committee saw what it called "the erosion in the IDF's credibility and its image" as the main problem of the checkpoints and it formed recommendations that would bring about the reduction of friction and contribute to the increased efficiency and "maintenance of the credibility and the image of the IDF".[12]

Interestingly, one of the guiding lines of the report is that it is necessary to create regularity in the procedures, means and practices carried out at the checkpoints, something contrary to the military logic vis-à-vis the occupation and the checkpoints, where irregularity usually reigns. The activity at the checkpoints is defined by the committee as "operational, with all that implies", and accordingly, the recommendations require that the manpower active at the checkpoints become more professional [13]. One of the results of the Spiegel Report was the establishment of special Military Police regiments, whose purpose is to carry out the police activities at the checkpoints. The privatization process fits in very well with the committee's conclusions.

In the new, privatized terminals, the security-screening procedures go through complete systemization and dehumanization and are carried out in an almost "vacuumed packed" manner, or, in other words, with no friction. The security-screening process is carried out in corridors containing small rooms whose walls are made of unidirectional glass. A security officer stands behind the glass and calls the 'examinee' into the first room over a microphone. The 'examinees' are told to leave their personal belongings in the first room and to leave the room. Only when they have left and the door has been locked behind them, does the security officer appear and go through their things. Once he has left, the 'examinees' are then again called (over the microphone) to move on to the next room in the corridor, where they are told to drop their magnetic cards into a bowl and pass it through a small window to the computerized screening station. As mentioned above, the whole process takes place with no direct contact between the security officer and the Palestinian passing through the crossing point. There are additional armed security officers moving about on the roofs of some of the corridors at some of the terminals[14]. 

Focusing on the privatized checkpoints, it is easy to forget the arbitrariness that still exists in the mechanisms of the occupation. At the Kalandia Checkpoint, for example, the visitors are greeted by a white sign, printed with red letters, "Palestinian Authority territory area A ahead. No entry of Israelis, entry illegal by Israeli law." The sign is there despite the fact that Israelis, particularly, are allowed through the checkpoint and are allowed to reach the villages in the area, since they are not defined as being in Area A and they are, therefore, not under the Palestinian rule. Israeli citizens are allowed to be in the area of the checkpoint, just as the civilian security officers are allowed to be there. However, institutionalization has a power that works easily, even on those who are aware of its deceitfulness. As the checkpoint in Beit Lechem exemplifies, those on the outside can hardly see into the "new terminal", decorated with the new signs, which say "Have a pleasant and safe stay" in Hebrew, Arabic and English. What cannot be seen from the outside, what is happening through the gates and fences, cannot be seen. When all the activity of the checkpoint moves inside an organized terminal such as this one, it is not exposed to the elements, to the heat of the sun, to the arbitrariness of the soldiers – but it is also not open to the eye of the observer. That is the same eye that pinpointed the checkpoints as the brutal face of the occupation from their very beginning. The annoying, bothersome eye of the activists and the organizations concerned about human rights, like Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch.[15]

In his article, 'Outsourcing Violations: The Israeli Case', Neve Gordon deals with the non-economic forms of outsourcing, which allow the IDF to divest itself of responsibility for human rights violations. Gordon focuses on the systems of passing responsibility on from the IDF to other security authorities, such as the South Lebanese Army, the Border Police and the Palestinian Authority's Security Personnel[16]. The removal of "sensitive" areas from the army's responsibility allows Israel to divest itself of responsibility for certain tasks and certain places where massive human rights violations are being committed. It seems to me that the same logic is in place in the case under discussion, wherein there is actual outsourcing taking place, not to other security authorities, but to the marketplace.


Look for me at the Checkpoint: The difference between soldiers, policemen and security officers

"There are those who can't differentiate between a security officer and a policeman. You see him in uniform – the same uniform, practically the same thing."[17]

It seems that, at least for now, privatized checkpoints work in ways that are very similar to the checkpoints run by IDF soldiers: the physical and social similarities between the security officers and the soldiers, as well as the overlap in authority and the manner in which the two groups work is discernible. This is also true as far as the functions fulfilled by the security officers, and even their perception of themselves is not fundamentally different from that of the soldiers fulfilling the same role.

Amazingly, employees of some of the companies are dressed just like border policemen. It's just the tricot shirts, instead of the army shirts, and the baseball cap with the name of the company on it that give them away. A recent visit to other checkpoints shows that the strange phenomena of one organization "posing as" another has become very widespread, and very confusing. In addition to the familiar osmosis between the Border Police, which is part of the Israel Police Force, and the IDF, we now have the fact that during the past few years the IDF has trained several regiments, particularly of Border Police (the "Taoz" Unit and the "Erez" Regiment), for the policing tasks at the checkpoints. At certain checkpoints, for example at the Ras Abu Sbeitan ("The Olive") Checkpoint, between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, there are police soldiers, soldiers of the police force and civilian security officers, who pose as either or both of the above.

The private security officers come from Israel's socio-economic periphery, as do many of the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint. Although there are no official statistics that clearly show this, it would seem that most of the security officers at the checkpoints are either non-Jews, Druze or Bedouin, Jews of Eastern (Mizrachi) descent or new immigrants from Ethiopia or the former Soviet Union, like their counterparts securing office buildings, restaurants and malls, and those working in the security services along the separation wall, where contracting companies are doing construction work.[18] Salach, a Druze from the north, is standing at the Shech Sa'ad Checkpoint with two other security officers – Vladimir, and someone whom his friends call Gabrieli. Vladimir was released from the army, from the artillery unit, a month and a half ago, during which he spent quite a bit of time serving as a soldier at the checkpoints. David, a Border Policeman in compulsory service who is standing at the checkpoint, tells me bitterly during the interview, "I'm sure I'll be killed working in security services; I don't have the head for university studies and degrees." The new private security officers, like the soldiers in the non-elite units, are the casualties from the socio-economical margins of society about whom Yagil Levy writes in his article, "The Casualties from the Periphery: The Social Stratification of the IDF Casualties from the Al-Aqsa Intifada". These are soldiers, or in this case, mercenaries, who come from poor neighborhoods or development towns, which have weak educational systems, who have hardly any chance of getting a university education; those whose tragic deaths does not enrage Israeli society as much.[19]

And even more importantly – even the privatized checkpoints, whether they are renovated terminals or run down security screening stations, they will not be serving as international border-crossing points, but as part of the regime of movement in the occupied territories- a regime which is one of the most effective and representative control mechanisms of the late Israeli occupation. There are quite a number of testimonies to the fact that the placing of civilian security officers instead of soldiers has not necessarily been to the benefit of those having to go through the crossing points. A testimony from the Reihan Checkpoint, the first checkpoint to be privatized, for example, echoes hundreds of other testimonies from other checkpoints spread out along the width and the breadth of the West Bank: "The company employees (S.B. Security Systems) carry out the security screening of the Palestinians going through the checkpoint, among other things. According to the Palestinians and to Israeli activist from human rights groups, whoever looks suspicious to the security officers is sent to a solitary confinement room, a detainment room inside the checkpoint, for an additional security screening. The room is about two meters by two meters. The weather has also been very hot over the past few weeks; there is no chair, window or fan in this un-air-conditioned room and sometimes they send four or five people in there at a time; there were times when they pushed twenty people in there at once. It can take minutes, but it can also take hours or more"[20]. 

* * * 

The language of the late occupation is purified and deceptive. Under the influence of the developments in late capitalism and in globalization, the army is required to use a managerial-bureaucratic language, and is even happy to comply with these requirements. This use of language allows the essence and the actions of the occupational army to be blurred, to be described as the results of rational, professional decisions. The linguistic purification is not only analogous to that taking place in the fields of economic management, but it also converges with it. The civilian dimension of the process, as opposed to the economic, has an important part to play in the process itself. Within the project of privatizing the checkpoints, we find the convergence of "civilian" logic (in the non-military sense) with the neo-liberal (in the sense of non-political). These two logics converge, since, from a discoursive perspective, the privatization of any state mechanism is perceived, a priori, as promoting efficiency. It seems to be clear to everyone, ideologically and conceptually, that the market is the best means to the organization of society, and, as such, to the organization of violence.

As mentioned earlier, while the economic and practical profit from the process of privatization is not wholly clear and unambiguous, the concrete action of replacing IDF soldiers with civilian security officers, which merges with a series of activities that seek to create a kind of "civilian normalization" of the privatized checkpoints, has a very significant political and ideological importance. The fact that the checkpoints have been the focus of fierce criticism since the beginning of the second Intifada makes them the ideal site for attempting to purify the occupation (something like, "now the occupation is more pleasant, it has nice sheds, comfortable benches and water fountains"). In a situation such as this, it is clear that opposition to the occupation from the perspective of human rights is not enough, in the best case, and that what is needed is a socio-political struggle to bring this occupation to its end. 

Click here to watch a short video about checkpoint privatization by IMEMC.


* Translated from Hebrew by Maureen Amir. This text is an abbreviated and partial version of a lecture I gave on this subject on different occasions. I would be happy to answer questions and to receive email responses to: maozeila@gmail.com
   [1]The Knesset Information and Research Department, Crossing Points to Israel from Gaza and The West Bank (presented to the Interior and Environmental Protection Committee). Written by: Uri Tal, June 19, 2006.

[2]Uzi Berlinski, Prime Minister's Office General Supervisor, Protocol no. 133, Meeting of the State Comptroller and Ombudsman Committee. Tuesday, November 23, 2004.

[3]The State Comptroller, Annual Report 55a, 2004. It was also mentioned in that same report that the Security Industries ran into difficulties during those same years, and that there was an excess of production capacity, both in the logistic centers and in the security industries.

[4]Ibid.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Soloman, Ilan and Stuart A. Cohen. "The IDF: From a 'People's Army' to a 'Professional Military' ", Maarachot, May-June 1995, Journal no. 341 (Editor: Lieutenant Colonel Hagai Golan) Ministry of Defense Publications.

[7]The State Comptroller, Annual Report 55a, 2004. The emphasis did not exist in the original.

[8]A comment made by Amos Yaron, Ministry of Defense General Supervisor will also testify to this: "The hourly wage of an enlisted soldier is significantly lower than that of a civilian. Let us assume that I am a budgetary system and that I must carry out certain tasks according to a given budget; it is far cheaper for me, in part, to work within the IDF, and not outside – for example, because of the wages of the enlisted soldiers. However, for the economy – in some areas, it depends – there are things that are better to do on the outside. In order for me to turn these things over to someone on the outside, I would have to receive some sort of compensation; otherwise I would suffer a loss." (Amos Yaron, Ministry of Defense General Supervisor). Protocol no. 495, The Knesset Interior and Environmental Protection Committee Meeting. Wednesday, July 27, 2005.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Ibid.

[11]These are, of course, the days of the first Intifada. It would be interesting to study the question of the development of this managerial system in the IDF together with the development of the Palestinian resistance.

[12]Arbel, Tal "From Limitations on Movement to Management of Life: The System of Limitations on the Freedom of Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a Bio-political Technology", a lecture given in the "Israel-Palestine: A Political Tragedy in the Making Research Group", June, 2007.

[13]"The Main Points of The Spiegel Report", NRG Internet Site, October 24, 2004.

[14]An interview with a checkpoint director of Mikud Security, January 11, 2008.

[15]Kotef, Hagar and Merav Amir. 2007. "(En)Gendering Checkpoints: Checkpoint Watch and the Repercussions of Intervention", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32(4):973-996.

[16]Gordon, Neve. Out Sourcing Violations: The Israeli Case. Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2002), 321-337.

[17]Seach Saad, a security officer at a checkpoint, October 17, 2007.

[18]See "Fact" ("Uvda") the investigative news program, regarding Sergei Weizman, the security officer working along the border who was charged with shooting and wounding a Palestinian.

[19]Levi, Yagil. , "The War of the Periphery: The Social Stratification of the IDF Casualties from the Al-Aqsa Intifada". Theory and Criticism 27. Fall 2005 (in Hebrew). Yagil Levy analyses what he calls "The reciprocity between military participation and political participation", and argues that the autonomy of the State of Israel in conducting its military actions has been strengthened in view of the change that has occurred in the social make-up of IDF casualties in the fighting in the occupied territories. It seems to me that this analysis is extremely relevant to the private security officers as well; on the one hand, it relates to their coming from the periphery and, on the other, to their being, if not actual mercenaries, at least less "official" ("governmental") than the IDF soldiers.

[20]Ali Waked, "Machsom Watch: Roadblock operating 'dungeon'" Ynet, Sept. 4, 2007 (in Hebrew).