Well, it's no surprise there are Mercs doing biz with Israel, that's nothing new.  However, publicly ADVERTIZING that you want to use Mercs IS a new strategy.  This story is not the result of great journalistic investigative reporting, it's obviously been leaked to this newzpaper on purpose.

Why do this?  Well, first it allows them to circumvent needing any congressional approval to get active FSoA military personnel doing this job. 2nd it means the Israelis pick up the tab to pay for their salaries, so it doesn't take any FSoA taxpayer dollars.  3rd Mercs have much less oversight over how they go about doing their enforcement job.  The only problems come when they get a little over-zealous and you get an incident where a whole bunch of women and children get in the way of the bullets they are using to do the enforcing with, which some pesky reporter manages to video with his Iphone.

Now, if the FSoA officially doesn't know they are using Mercs, they have Plausible Deniability, so that is the way this sort of thing would normally be done.  The only worries the contractor has is if somebody at the Hague decides to prosecute the CEO for war crimes.  Otherwise, they could give a shit about public opinion either here or in Israel.

Here however, by asking permission publicly, plausible deniability is lost, so if there is an ugly incident then it would blowback onto the pols who gave the OK for it.  Thus I can't see any pol as giving the Thumbs Up on this unless he is getting an awfully big campaign contribution from the Israeli Goobermint.  Under the table of course, since that wouldn't be legal.

If the Israelis do manage to get this plan approved, it gives them Plausible Deniability that they are trying to takeover these areas,  they simply are trying to protect them from being sabotaged by terrorists once the IDF leaves the neighborhood.  They also can claim they are not handling the border crossing security problem the Egyptians will have as Palestinians try to cross into Egypt.  I doubt the Egyptians like this plan very much.

The Israelis have everything to gain and nothing to lose with this arrangement, but there is nothing for the FSoA to gain here other than money being paid to the Merc Company and money paid to politicians in the pocket of the Israeli Goobermint, of which there are many.  There is no strategic value here, except perhaps keeping some oil company assets in the neighborhood from being sabotaged.

Will it be given the Thumbs Up?  Depends how much money the Israelis sprinkle around in Washington.  It's a risky thing to approve if there is an ugly incident following the implementation, which there probably would be eventually.  But if the Envelope has enough Greenbacks in it, I'm sure the Israelis can find the right pockets to stuff it into.

RE