The lack of accountability for the atrocities committed in Gaza has paved the way for further aggression against civilians across the region, marked by the malicious use of communications technology and infrastructure. In both Palestine and Lebanon, weaponisation of technology is fuelling new forms of oppression and adding to the suffering of people already living through extreme hardship.
According to Amnesty International data, over 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in 11 months and nearly 95,000 people have been wounded, including thousands left permanently disabled. Displacement and inhumane living conditions are stark. The violence and suffering have been nonstop and are now spreading to the region with the recent attacks targeting Lebanon. A single day of Israeli airstrikes in south Lebanon has left over 500 people dead, forcing many to leave their homes. Attacks on civilian populations in Palestine and Lebanon must stop immediately and a complete and unconditional ceasefire must be urgently imposed.
The recent attacks in Lebanon that killed at least nine people, including a nine-year-old girl, and left over 2,700 people injured, points towards what civil society groups have seen as a clear “attempt to terrorise and inflict harm on civilians.”
APC member 7amleh has documented how Israel has used hateful discourse and disinformation campaigns to create an anti-Palestine narrative to justify genocide. Between 7 October 2023 and September 2024, there have been 5,100 cases of digital censorship and spread of harmful content reported on major platforms such as Meta and X.
While speech has been weaponised to justify the collective punishment against Palestinians and hinder humanitarian aid efforts, online platforms benefit financially from harmful content through advertisement profits while censoring Palestinian voices. The 7amleh report revealed that Facebook ran targeted ads inciting the assassination of individuals and advocating for the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan.
Social media platforms have been complacent, and at times complicit, in spreading hatred through shadow banning content that reports on the situation in Gaza, and protest actions by students and other groups around the world, with acts that too often amount to censorship. Research by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre concluded that “despite multiple reports on the role social media has played in contributing to abuse in the conflict, of seven social media companies surveyed, only TikTok and Meta provided detail on measures taken to combat dissemination of misinformation, hate speech and incitement to violence post-7 October 2023.”
SMEX has also reported that internet and wireless communication shutdowns have been deployed by Israel as an illegal warfare tactic, affecting millions of Gaza residents and exacerbating their suffering as they endure heavy bombardment by Israeli forces and remain under complete siege with almost no water, food, fuel or medicine.
The lack of accountability for the atrocities in Gaza gave Israel carte blanche to spread its aggressions to the region, with attacks affecting civilians in Lebanon and carried out with the use of communications devices and infrastructure. Pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in Lebanon in September, killing at least 37 people, including children, and injuring thousands more. According to media reports, the attacks are the result of a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military.
To use communications devices as bombs sets a dangerous and pernicious precedent that can promote a new pattern of tech-enabled terror – targeting not just those who own these devices but also those around them at the time of the blasts. As indicated by Amnesty International, “using hidden explosive devices concealed within everyday telecommunications devices to wage deadly attacks on such a scale is unprecedented,” and a clear violation of humanitarian norms. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, also stated that “[i]nternational humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”
Over the past couple of days, the telecommunications infrastructure in Lebanon has also been hacked and used to send threatening messages, further expanding the tactics of using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to spread fear and promote chaos. SMEX also documented text messages, sponsored ads and other misleading information targeting the Lebanese population, including fake eviction requests on WhatsApp and phishing links behind aid platforms for displaced persons.
Facial recognition technology and surveillance have been a part of Israel’s extensive and continued domination and oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories for many years now, but media reports account for the growth in its use in the past year. In Hebron, for example, checkpoints employ facial recognition technology to record the biometric data of people who move around the city. These databases and tools exclusively record the data of Palestinians, and are used to determine their eligibility to enter or exit their neighbourhoods and other locations, serving as a tool in a broader system of arbitrary restrictions on movement that impacts Palestinians’ access to basic services and rights. These include, for example, reducing their ability to access healthcare, employment and education, as well as their ability to exercise their right to freedom of peaceful assembly. This technology has also been employed in Israel’s artificial intelligence-enabled warfare that led to the indiscriminate targeting of civilian populations with little to no human intervention.
A recent Human Rights Watch report also indicates that the Israeli military’s use of surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital tools to help determine targets to attack in Gaza “may be exacerbating the risk to civilians and raises grave ethical, legal, and humanitarian concerns,” due to problems in both the design and use of these tools.
All these distortions and misuses of technology for oppression and violence in Palestine and Lebanon are in blatant violation of human dignity, and are in full disrespect of human rights standards and international humanitarian law.
Critical gaps and failures of the global governance in peace and security issues have been made evident by ongoing genocide and unparalleled destruction of civilian lives in Palestine and in other parts of the world. While the UN adopts a new Global Digital Compact to “outline principles, objectives and actions for advancing an open, free, secure and human-centered digital future for all”, digital technology is being used for killing of innocent people and for war.
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to implement six provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza. In July, the ICJ issued a historic advisory opinion concluding that Israel’s decades-long occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory is unlawful because it violates fundamental elements of international humanitarian law and denies Palestinians their human rights. According to the ICJ, Israel is under an obligation to end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Such recommendations, however, have been fully ignored.
In view of this alarming context, we call for:
- An immediate halt to indiscriminate attacks against civilians, the weaponisation of digital devices in civilian areas and the discriminatory policies and practices in social media platforms.
- An immediate end to Israel’s use of communication devices to kill and to propagate tech-enabled fear and chaos amidst civilian populations.
- The end of mass biometric surveillance in Palestine.
- An immediate halt to the deliberate discriminatory policies and practices in platform moderation against Palestinians and those defending Palestinian human rights globally. We join our member 7amleh in calling for “recurrent, comprehensive, and transparent due diligence exercises to evaluate the impact of platforms’ content moderation and curation decisions on individual and collective digital rights in Israel/Palestine."
- Immediate humanitarian aid and protection: As the number of casualties continues to rise amid growing tension and instability, we demand member states provide immediate international assistance, including medical care and support to the victims.
- The full restoration of telecommunications services in the Gaza Strip is also urgent. Internet shutdowns must not be used as weapons of war. As for the situation of access in Lebanon, we join our member SMEX in asking Lebanese authorities to provide access to telecommunications for people in affected areas and shelters.
- An immediate international investigation: The United Nations must urgently commission a prompt, effective, thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into the tampering of communications devices and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.
- Immediate ceasefire and accountability mechanisms: The international community must use every tool at its disposal, from carefully targeted sanctions to legal proceedings, to hold the perpetrators of these acts of violence against civilians accountable.
- States should recognise the Advisory Opinion issued in July 2024 by the International Court of Justice, calling for Israel to comply with its obligation to end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
- States should comply with the UN General Assembly resolution of September 2024 that demands Israel to end its unlawful presence and policies in Occupied Palestinian Territory within 12 months.
Image: "Free Palestine/ Anti-Israel protest" by Can Pac Swire used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license (https://flic.kr/p/2pDrASJ).