Security Sector Reform (SSR) has assumed increasing importance as Western donor states have come to view it as critical for mediating the transition from war to peace in post-conflict states, and thus as a key part of state-building. SSR has also become the cornerstone of the Oslo-declared state-building project in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Supported financially and politically by the EU and the US, SSR has influenced the content of international programmes for development assistance, security cooperation and democracy promotion. However, its operational success has been limited and thus far analysis has largely focused on the discrepancy between concept and implementation, to improve the operational capability of SSR programs. Although current discourse on SSR acknowledges its political dimension, it has ignored its implications. This paper aims to address this issue, and place SSR in the context of the growing body of “international expertise” used to justify and direct the highly intrusive intervention in and regulation of non-Western societies by the Great Powers. Contrary to the way it is commonly perceived, SSR is not a politically benign model. The utilisation of concepts that appear politically neutral in the official rhetoric of SSR like security, human rights and good governance strip it of historical and political content and serve to legitimise the practice of power in contemporary international relations by making the exercise of that power appear as empowering rather than domineering. The oPt provides an apt case study, as the state-building project there has become synonymous with SSR. In contrast to more conventional cases where sovereignty clouds the power dynamics behind the intervention, the oPt is an extreme example of SSR. However, it is precisely because the oPt is such an extreme example of SSR, given the absence of sovereignty, it lays bare the underlying discourse of power, on the micro level of Israeli colonialism and on the macro level of the interaction between centre and periphery. This paper will scrutinize current SSR discourse and the conceptual apparatus from which it draws its substance and legitimacy. It will examine the conceptual parameters of SSR in the oPt, its implementation and the paradoxes it has created, which diverges substantially from conventional understandings of security and statehood. SSR is therefore illustrative of the dissimulation in the discourse of power and its articulation.