Israel new detention orders against Palestinians amount to law elimination: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Anthony Hall, a professor of Globalization at the Lethbridge University, to discuss the new administrative detention orders against Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Professor Hall now of course this practice of administrative detention on the part of the Israeli officials what do you make of that? What purpose does it achieve?

Hall: This is going on not only in Israel but in Canada and United States and European countries. This is essentially the elimination of the rule of law, of any sense of due process and full empowerment of the executive branch to essentially do what it wants. Of course the treatment of the Palestinians is a sort of ground zero in whole technique and strategy of dealing with dissident population of all kinds. So, I think it is important to pay careful attention to what is being done to Palestinians in that setting precedent which are clearly being used in other venues to suppress other groups that may represent some kind of threat to a established power.

Press TV: The fact that specifically when we are speaking about Palestine as well that these prisoners are kept in Israeli jails for month if not years without any charges and without any trial. That by itself is proof enough that they have not broken any law, committed any wrong for Israel to be able to put those charges against them.

Hall: They have not committed any wrong or maybe it is not convenient … to prove whatever they allege to have done. Of course any wrong what is the nature of a wrong in a situation where whole populations are essentially incarcerated and their human rights are denied and their basic human needs are denigrated and where people are rendered as sub-humans by the dominant society, what is the nature of crimes done by such population? Of course here in Canada our jails are full of indigenous peoples and native peoples. In the United States the jails are full of especially black people.

The relegation of … the most demean populations to prisons population this unfortunately is how it is done and increasingly how it is done in this era of the so-called global war on terror when people can simply be designated as threats and all their recognition as human beings possessing human rights can just simply be eliminated by executive dictate. This has to be identified for what it is -- the travesty. 

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