Photo: Yousef Zaanoun

In response to a UN Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development’s call for input on artificial intelligence, cultural rights and the right to development, Al-Haq highlighted the manner in which Israel’s deployment of AI-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) in Gaza, and its pervasive digital surveillance regime across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, amount to a structural, discriminatory denial of the Palestinian people’s right to development and, with it, their inalienable right to self-determination.

Rapid advances in AI, cloud computing and surveillance technology – developed without meaningful regulation – have ushered in a new era in Israel’s unlawful occupation and apartheid system, in which its illegal presence, annexation, racial discrimination and destruction of the Palestinian people can be automated and carried out at a distance. In Gaza, AI systems such as ‘Lavender’, ‘The Gospel’ (‘Habsora’) and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ are used to generate “kill lists” based on numerical risk scores assigned to Palestinians and rapidly identify homes, neighbourhoods and civilian infrastructure for targeting.

Across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the submission documents an AI-assisted “digital panopticon” built around tools such as ‘Blue Wolf’, ‘Red Wolf’, the ‘Wolf Pack’ biometric database, and the upgraded ‘Mabat 2000’ CCTV network. These systems capture, store and algorithmically process Palestinians’ faces, movements and social ties to determine who may pass checkpoints and who is interrogated or detained. Al-Haq emphasised that this dense surveillance grid is not a neutral security tool but a governing structure of Israel’s genocidal, settler-colonial apartheid regime. By making everyday life contingent on opaque, discriminatory algorithms, it produces pervasive fear and hopelessness, drives self-censorship both offline and online, and fragments the social and political networks required for “active, free and meaningful participation” in economic, social, cultural and political life – all core elements of the right to development.

The submission further highlights how AI-driven practices dehumanise Palestinians and attack the very foundation of human dignity on which the right to development is built. In Gaza, every person is reduced to a data point within systems such as Lavender, which rate individuals based on broad, operator-defined criteria – such as age, gender, residence and communication patterns – and treat entire families as expendable when a house is marked as a target. In the West Bank, gamified data-collection through Blue Wolf rewards soldiers for capturing as many Palestinian faces as possible, reducing people to traffic-light colour codes on a screen while leaving illegal settlers outside the field of algorithmic vision.

Unsurprisingly, corporations are integral to Israel’s AI-DSS warfare and surveillance ecosystem by supplying the infrastructure that powers the systems. The submission details how cloud providers and AI companies such as Microsoft, Google, Palantir and OpenAI provide the storage and machine-learning capabilities that allow the Israeli military and intelligence services to ingest vast amounts of intercepted communications and other data on Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories. This serves as another stark reminder of the legal vacuum in which AI militarisation is taking place. The glaring ineffectiveness of applicable soft law principles, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which articulate both State duties and corporate responsibilities to identify, prevent and mitigate human rights harms is made evident through the disregard shown by technology companies even when dealing with a rogue, genocidal State.

Finally, the submission situates these practices within the broader international legal framework. It recalls the International Court of Justice’s 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which found that Israel’s policies and practices obstruct the Palestinian people’s right to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. AI-enabled targeting and mass surveillance both intensify the material devastation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and the destruction of the Palestinian people generally, as well as eliminating the procedural conditions – including spontaneity and the ability to “act in concert”, the freedom of assembly and association, and even physical liberty – that are indispensable for the exercise of the right to development, and as a consequence, self-determination.

On the basis of these findings, Al-Haq called on the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development to:

• Call on Israel to immediately cease all AI-enabled targeting and mass-surveillance in the OPT, including a moratorium on systems such as Lavender, The Gospel, Where’s Daddy?, Mabat 2000, Blue Wolf, Red Wolf and other facial-recognition/biometric tools and databases.
• Require Israel to dismantle its discriminatory digital infrastructure, including through an independent audit and verifiable destruction of the Wolf Pack database, and to end arrests, movement restrictions and other sanctions based on AI-driven profiling or online/social media activity.
• Oblige Israel to restore and protect the material and procedural conditions necessary for Palestinian development and to provide full reparations, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, for harms caused by AI-assisted operations.
• Affirm that Israel’s AI-enabled military and surveillance practices constitute a discriminatory deprivation of the Palestinian people’s right to development and an ongoing obstruction of their right to self-determination, in line with the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
• Adopt and implement an immediate global moratorium on the development, transfer, provision and use of AI-assisted targeting and mass surveillance systems in situations of genocide, occupation, apartheid or serious, systematic human-rights violations, including in the OPT.
• Require all States, consistent with their erga omnes obligations and the ICJ Advisory Opinion, to refrain from recognising, supporting or assisting Israel’s unlawful occupation, including by prohibiting the export, licensing, provision or facilitation of AI, cloud and surveillance technologies that enable its targeting of Palestinian civilians and related infrastructure.
• Demand a ban on all financial, trade, research and cloud-computing partnerships connected to Israel’s military and surveillance sectors, and enforce compliance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
• Pursue accountability for corporate and financial actors through criminal prosecution, sanctions, divestment and strategic litigation where they develop, fund, supply or maintain AI systems used to facilitate genocide, apartheid or other grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
• Provide sustained support to community-led initiatives, Palestinian civil society and impartial humanitarian organisations that work to rebuild social fabric, address the psychological harms of Israel’s digital panopticon, dehumanisation and enable meaningful participation in political, economic, social and cultural life.
• Integrate the right to development and related right to self-determination into all emerging international, regional and national AI governance frameworks and binding regulation of military AI.

Al-Haq’s full submission can be found here.