Summary
Nour Naim’s term for Israel’s suffocation of Gaza’s digital space: a neoliberal economic agenda, enforced through control of crossings, “dual use” import bans and communications infrastructure, that deepens Palestinian economic reliance on Israel and confines Palestinian technology to spaces Israel allows (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.149).
Details
- It manifests, in Naim’s opening account, in agreements between Israel and the Palestine Telecommunications Company (Paltel) that have turned high-tech Palestinian companies into proxies for Israel (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.149).
- Its effect is to deprive Palestinians of the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including AI, robotics and remote work, as the world heads toward the post-digital era (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.149).
- Naim details five Israeli strategies maintaining it: preventing Palestinian technical development (infrastructure dependence, Gaza held to 2G while Israel uses 5G, ITU resolutions 32, 9, 125 and 12 unimplemented, May 2021 attacks on internet infrastructure); surveillance through facial recognition (AnyVision’s “Better Tomorrow”); suppression through drones (the zannana); digital siege through military robots and sensors (ANDROS, Haroni, SandCat, the EU-funded iDetecT4ALL project); and combating Palestinian cyberspace, which she names the “Cyber Dome” — platform deletion and suspension of pro-Palestinian content, with platforms fulfilling 95 percent of the Israeli Cyber Unit’s deletion requests (PDF p.153-159).
- Gaza’s stolen private data makes it, in her account, a source of big data for AI algorithms and a laboratory for testing AI military technology without international monitoring or legal accountability, serving Israel’s twofold goal of profit and domination (PDF p.150).
Related pages
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, Nour Naim, Gaza, Gaza Siege