Tag: palestine

U.S. Tech Giants Palantir and Dataminr Embed AI Surveillance in Gaza’s Post-War Control Grid

American surveillance firms Palantir and Dataminr have inserted themselves into the U.S. military’s operations center overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, raising alarms about a dystopian AI-driven occupation regime under the guise of Trump’s peace plan.

Since mid-October, around 200 U.S. military personnel have operated from the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel, roughly 20 kilometers from Gaza’s northern border. Established to implement President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan—aimed at disarming Hamas, rebuilding the Strip, and paving the way for Palestinian self-determination—the center has drawn UN Security Council endorsement.

Yet no Palestinian representatives have joined these discussions on their future. Instead, seating charts and internal presentations reveal the presence of Palantir’s “Maven Field Service Representative” and Dataminr’s branding, signaling how private U.S. tech companies are positioning to profit from the region’s devastation.

Palantir’s Maven platform, described by the U.S. military as its “AI-powered battlefield platform,” aggregates data from satellites, drones, spy planes, intercepted communications, and online sources to accelerate targeting for airstrikes and operations. Defense reports highlight how it “packages” this intelligence into searchable apps for commanders, effectively shortening the “kill chain” from identification to lethal action.

Palantir’s CTO recently touted this capability as “optimizing the kill chain.” The firm secured a $10 billion Army contract over the summer to refine Maven, which has already guided U.S. strikes in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.

Palantir’s ties to Israel’s military run deep, formalized in a January 2024 strategic partnership for “war-related missions.” The company’s Tel Aviv office, opened in 2015, has expanded rapidly amid Israel’s Gaza operations. CEO Alex Karp has defended the commitment, declaring Palantir the first company to be “completely anti-woke” despite genocide accusations.

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Israeli troops caught on camera executing unarmed Palestinians in West Bank’s Jenin

Video footage from 27 November showed Israeli troops executing two unarmed Palestinian resistance fighters in the occupied West Bank, where Tel Aviv has recently escalated raids and attacks as part of a new operation against resistance factions in the territory. 

The two men who were executed were killed as they were surrendering themselves to the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday, the footage showed. In the video, the two lift up their shirts and hold their hands up to show they are unarmed.

An Israeli soldier is seen kicking one of the Palestinians in the footage. Both are then lined up and shot dead at the entrance of the storage facility, where they were initially surrounded by the Israeli army. 

After the execution, an army bulldozer is seen demolishing the facility over their bodies. 

The two were members of the Jenin Brigade of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement’s Quds Brigades. They were killed as they surrendered following a clash with Israeli troops.

They have been identified as 37-year-old commander Yusuf Ali Asasa and 26-year-old fighter Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmoud Abdullah. 

The Quds Brigades released a statement mourning the resistance members, “who ascended to the highest ranks after a journey filled with jihad and resistance, following a field execution carried out by the Nazi enemy army … after their ammunition ran out during an armed clash with enemy forces that besieged them.”

The Israeli army admitted in its own statement that the two men were shot during a joint operation by the military and border police around Jenin city. 

It added that the shooting “is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.”

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has been pushing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, defended the execution, saying that “terrorists must die.”

“We must put an end to investigations targeting our soldiers who open fire on terrorists,” the minister added. 

Israeli Army Radio reported that three soldiers from the undercover ‘Mista’arvim’ unit are being investigated.

“The extrajudicial killing of two unarmed Palestinians in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, who posed no threat, constitutes another link in the chain of extrajudicial killings targeting Palestinians throughout occupied Palestinian territory. This is a grave violation of international humanitarian law … amounting to war crimes that warrant international criminal prosecution,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. 

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Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza drained NATO’s TNT reserves: Report

Polish MP Maciej Konieczny told parliament on 21 November that Europe cannot secure enough TNT for its own defense or for Ukraine because Nitro-Chem, Poland’s sole producer and the continent’s only large TNT supplier, is bound by contracts sending much of its output to the US, where the explosive is used to manufacture the MK-84 and BLU-109 bombs supplied to Israel for its Gaza assault. 

He said this diversion has left Poland with barely a month’s worth of TNT for wartime needs and has pushed European militaries into a severe shortage, while raising questions over whether Israel’s bombardment is being prioritized over Europe’s security requirements.

The Telegraph also recently cited a consortium of international rights groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, saying Israel’s widescale bombardment of Gaza has relied heavily on TNT supplied through Poland’s state-owned Nitro-Chem plant, a dependence it links to the explosive shortage now facing NATO.

The factory provides 90 percent of the TNT imported by the US for munitions such as the MK-84 and BLU-109 “bunker buster” bombs.

Those weapons have been delivered to Israel in large quantities and linked to high-casualty strikes on densely populated areas. Nitro-Chem has also supplied TNT and RDX to Israel directly.

The report notes that Washington continued dispatching heavy bombs to Israel even as global supplies tightened, including recent shipments that preceded the company’s $310-million agreement with the US military to deliver TNT between 2027 and 2029. 

It warns that western dependence on a single Polish facility has left the rest of Europe exposed to a shortage of explosives, a gap intensified by the scale of Israeli demand.

According to the findings, from October 2023 to July 2024, the US transferred at least 14,000 MK-84 bombs and 8,700 MK-82 bombs to Israel while drawing on Nitro-Chem’s output for resupply. 

The report argues that “without Polish-made TNT, the unprecedented scale and intensity of aerial bombardment that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed the conditions of life in Gaza … would not be possible.”

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Trump is turning Gaza into a brutal colonial protection racket

The West has spent two years partnering Israel in its campaign of wanton destruction in Gaza. Now the United States – with the permission of a cowed United Nations Security Council – has appointed Donald Trump to preside over the ruins.

Like a Roman emperor, the US president will be able to dictate the fate of Gaza’s people with a simple gesture. Whatever he decides – whether the thumb turns up or down – it will be called “peace”.

Trump’s most likely side-kick in this depraved charade will be Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. He won his war-crime spurs more than 20 years ago, when he joined one of Trump’s predecessors, George W Bush, in launching an illegal invasion of Iraq and a subsequent, catastrophic occupation that left that country in ruins too.

Satire cannot do justice to this moment.

The eradication of Gaza could be achieved only with the complete hollowing out of international law – the legal global order that was established many decades ago to prevent a third world war and the horrors of the Holocaust.

Marking the demise of that era, the Security Council voted 13-0 this week to endorse Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza, with only Russia and China daring to abstain.

The dissenting representatives of the crumbling legal order – from the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Francesca Albanese, the UN’s legal expert for the occupied territories – have been isolated, vilified and sanctioned by the Trump administration. No one appears to be willing to come to their defence.

Quite the contrary. Germany, whose own genocidal rampage across Europe more than 80 years ago once left it a pariah state and drove the creation of the new legal order, now confidently leads the way in flouting those very rules.

It has resumed supplying Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the slaughter, justifying the decision on the grounds that Israel is murdering fewer Palestinians during Trump’s duplicitous “ceasefire”.

On Wednesday, Israel broke the ceasefire once again, killing more than 30 people in a series of air strikes, including 20 women and children.

Even the current “peace” allows Israel to occupy some 58 percent of Gaza in a depopulated “Green Zone”, effectively partitioning the territory for the forseeable future. Daily, Israel bombs families sheltering in the wreckage of the enclave’s interior, declared a “Red Zone”. And Israel continues to block the entry of food and medicines, including the temporary housing needed as winter rains deluge the territory.

Is this what, 19 years ago, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state, meant when she spoke of the coming, painful “birth pangs of a new Middle East”?

Now, it seems, they have arrived in full force – and the region has never looked more terrifying.

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U.S. Mercenary Firm Tied to Notorious Aid Scheme Is Recruiting for New Gaza Deployment

UG Solutions, a leading U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is stepping up its recruitment efforts amid possible plans for several aid distribution sites to be set up in Gaza by next month, Drop Site has learned.

A former army officer who applied for a position as an “International Humanitarian Security Officer” at UG Solutions told Drop Site that a company official told him in a job interview at the end of October that 12 to 15 sites were being planned to open in Gaza and that the company was “going to need a lot more guys.” The former army officer spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns.

The future of Gaza is at a critical juncture following this week’s Security Council vote to approve a U.S.-sponsored resolution authorizing an international stabilization force in Gaza, which would not fall under the command of the UN, but rather a so-called Board of Peace chaired by President Donald Trump. This committee would have sweeping authority over Gaza, including overseeing reconstruction, security, economic recovery, and coordinating the distribution of humanitarian aid.

The use of private military contractors in aid distribution in Gaza first began in May with GHF opening four distribution sites in Gaza guarded by security contractors, many of whom were U.S. military veterans recruited by UG Solutions. For the four and half months that GHF operated in Gaza, more than 2,600 Palestinians seeking food were killed and over 19,000 wounded by Israeli forces or security contractors at or near aid distribution sites. The sites were dismantled after a U.S.-brokered “ceasefire” agreement went into effect in Gaza on October 10.

The UG Solutions official who conducted the phone interview, Joel Reyes, told the former officer that deployment to Gaza was expected by early to mid December with deployments lasting 90 days. The officer was told the salary would be $800 per day for a “static guard” and $1,000 per day for “mobile guard” duty, plus a $180 per diem. When asked what the job entailed, Reyes told the recruit it was “pulling security.”

In response to inquiries about whether the claims of new aid sites in Gaza with a planned deployment for December were accurate, UG Solutions senior vice president of government affairs Jennifer Counter told Drop Site in an email that “UG Solutions is preparing for a wide range of potential scenarios in Gaza, ranging from an advisory role based on our experience from January 2025 to the present day, to a robust security presence in support of humanitarian aid delivery and possible technical assistance to the International Security Force.”

There are other indications of ramped up U.S. presence being planned in Gaza. On September 25, just one day after the $30 million GHF contract officially ended, a new U.S. contract with a company called Q2IMPACT was initiated, amounting to $7 million over five years to “monitor the efficacy of humanitarian aid in Palestine and Lebanon.” Rob Jenkins, the former head of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, and Sean Jones, a former USAID mission manager to Egypt, are senior advisers, according to Q2’s press releases.

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‘More Horrific Than Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo’: The Unsalvageable Depravity of Israel’s Prisons for Palestinians

On June 19, 2024, Khaled Mahajneh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, became the first lawyer to visit a notorious detention facility for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, located inside the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev Desert, one of several detention facilities established after October 7, 2023 to hold Palestinians seized in Gaza.

Speaking to +972 Magazine a week after his visit, Mahanjeh drew a pertinent comparison with the treatment of Muslim prisoners in the US’s post-9/11 “war on terror”, but concluded that Israel’s behavior was even worse.

“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo”, he said, adding, “I have been visiting political and security detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails for years, including since October 7. I know that the conditions of detention have become much harsher, and that the prisoners are abused on a daily basis. But Sde Teiman was unlike anything I’ve seen or heard before.”

Mahajneh “was initially approached by Al Araby TV, which was seeking information about Muhammad Arab”, also identified as Mohammed Saber Arab, “a reporter for the network who was arrested in March while covering the Israeli siege of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.”

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Trump’s Ploy at the UN Is American Imperialism Masquerading as a Peace Process

The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine. The resolution does three things. It establishes US political control over Gaza. It separates Gaza from the rest of Palestine. And it allows the US, and therefore Israel, to determine the timeline for Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza – which would mean: never.

This is imperialism masquerading as a peace process. In and of itself it’s no surprise. Israel runs US foreign policy in the Middle East. What is a surprise is that the US and Israel might just get away with this travesty unless the world speaks up with urgency and indignation.

The draft UNSC resolution would establish a US-UK-dominated Board of Peace, chaired by none other than Donald Trump himself, and endowed with sweeping powers over Gaza’s governance, borders, reconstruction, and security. This resolution would sideline the State of Palestine and condition any transfer of authority to the Palestinians on the indulgence of the Board of Peace.

This would be an overt return to the British Mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than Britain. If it weren’t so utterly tragic, it would be laughable. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Yes, the proposal is farce, yet Israel’s genocide is not. It is tragedy of the first order.

Incredibly, according to the draft resolution, the Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the Board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are “ready” to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years? Even military security is subordinated to the Board, and the envisioned forces would answer not to the UN Security Council or to the Palestinian people, but to the Board’s “strategic guidance.”

The US-Israel resolution is being put forward precisely because the rest of the world – other than Israel and the US – has woken up to two facts. First, Israel is committing genocide, a reality witnessed every day in Gaza and the West Bank, where innocent Palestinians are murdered to the satisfaction of the Israel Defense Forces and the illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Second, Palestine is a state, albeit one whose sovereignty remains obstructed by the US, which uses its veto in the UNSC to block Palestine’s permanent UN membership. At the UN this past July and then again in September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Palestine’s statehood, a fact that put the Israel-US Zionist lobby into overdrive, resulting in the current draft resolution.

For Israel to accomplish its goal of Greater Israel, the US is pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, squeezing Arab and Islamic states with threats and inducements. When other countries resist the US-Israel demands, they are cut off from critical technologies, lose access to World Bank and IMF financing, and suffer Israeli bombing, even in countries with US military bases present. The US offers no real protection; rather, it orchestrates a protection racket, extracting concessions from countries wherever US leverage exists. This extortion will continue until the global community stands up to such tactics and insists upon genuine Palestinian sovereignty and US and Israeli adherence to international law.

Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli maneuvers. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond. Israel and the US are currently at war, overtly or covertly, across the Horn of Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia), the Eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Syria), the Gulf region (Yemen), and Western Asia (Iraq, Iran).

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Palestinian people don’t exist – Israeli security minister

The Palestinian people do not exist, Israel’s hardline security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said ahead of the UN Security Council vote on implementing the next stage of the US-brokered peace plan for Gaza.

The Security Council will vote Monday on a resolution drafted by the US and backed by several Arab and Muslim countries, which they said “offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

In a lengthy X post on Saturday, Ben-Gvir, who is also the leader of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, claimed that “there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian people,’” arguing that the nation was “an invention without any historical, archaeological, or factual basis.”

“The collection of immigrants from Arab countries to the Land of Israel does not constitute a nation, and they certainly do not deserve a reward for the terrorism, murder, and atrocities they have spread everywhere, especially in Gaza,” he wrote, adding that the only “real” solution to the conflict was “encouraging voluntary emigration.”

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Israel wants to implement the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Here’s what you need to know. 

Israel is one step closer to passing a law that would allow Israeli courts to sentence Palestinian prisoners to death. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed the bill in a first reading with a majority of 39 votes in favor against 16 in opposition. The bill was presented as “exceptional” law, under a special status that allows it to be passed only with the majority of votes cast, and not the majority of the Knesset members, which is why absentees and abstentions were not counted. It still needs to pass two more readings before entering into force.

The law applies to individuals who are convicted for acts that led to the death of Israelis, if the acts were motivated by “racism or hostility towards the public” and “committed with the objective of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people,” making it applicable exclusively to Palestinians. It was introduced by Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the ultra-nationalist “Jewish Power” party with a strong support base by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, like Har-Melech herself.

The party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government coalition. The death penalty for Palestinian prisoners has been a main political demand of Ben-Gvir, who has been behind the worsening of detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in recent years.

Israel does have the death penalty in its law, but has only been considered applicable in rare situations of grave crimes, like genocide, and was applied once in 1962 against former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The new law introduces three new stipulations which indicate the intention is to use the death penalty on Palestinians.

First, the bill’s wording allows the death penalty on individuals convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic or racist” grounds. This limits its application to non-Israelis and employs the euphamism of “nationalistic” crimes which is commonly used to describe Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Second, since it applies to Palestinians in the occupied territory, it gives Israeli military courts, who are the ones who issue penal sentences against Palestinians under occupation the power to put Palestinians to death. Third, it allows the death sentence to be given with a simple majority of judges, and not by consensus.

Even still, Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law’s application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field. The law has several opponents, including Yair Lapid’s opposition “There is future” party, and the orthodox Haridi representatives. The opponents to the law abstained from voting, and many lawmakers were absent. But since it was introduced as an exceptional bill, requiring only a majority of votes cast, it passed.

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Israel destroys over 1,500 buildings in Gaza since start of ceasefire

The Israeli military has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire deal was reached last month, according to new satellite images – the latest of which was captured on 8 November.

The images, analyzed by BBC Verify, show that the Israeli army has wiped out entire neighborhoods in less than a month, mainly through demolitions. 

“The destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale,” the investigation says. 

The BBC used a change-detection algorithm to analyze radar photos – taken before and after US President Donald Trump’s ‘peace plan’ came into effect – which revealed the scale of damage and the number of visibly destroyed buildings.

The images show buildings beyond the Yellow Line, the perimeter to which Israeli forces agreed to withdraw their troops as part of the agreement.

Many of the demolished buildings did not appear to have sustained damage before their destruction, for example, near Rafah, Khan Yunis, and parts of Gaza City. 

“According to the agreement, all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure,” the Israeli army claims. 

Trump’s ceasefire plan calls for the destruction of all “terror infrastructure” under the “supervision of independent monitors.”

However, the satellite imagery and testimonies from Palestinians confirm the destruction of civilian homes and residential sites.

“This is definitely a violation of the ceasefire,” Dr. H. A. Hellyer of the UK-based RUSI think tank told BBC. “But [Washington] DC is unwilling to recognize it as such, insisting that the ceasefire has to hold, even when it isn’t actually holding.”

Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said these demolitions would continue to pose a problem until Israel withdraws from Gaza, and could jeopardize the ceasefire.

Yet the US plan allows Israel to maintain a presence in the strip until the resistance is completely disarmed. 

“Ultimately, the sense that Israel is stalling its withdrawal and looking to create new permanent facts on the ground, as it has in the West Bank, will become an increasingly greater threat to the maintenance of the ceasefire,” Lovatt added. 

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