A special investigation by Al Jazeera provided details of a racist surveillance system that is unparalleled globally; a system that tracks the residents of Hebron, puts their lives under the eyes of a forest of cameras, monitors their movements around the clock, and in which artificial intelligence makes the decision to allow passage, refuse it, or even liquidate suspects, without human intervention.
The "Observatory" program (2023/5/29) followed the details of the investigation, which showed that the occupation likes to call Hebron a "smart city", as a metaphor for an advanced system for monitoring and recognizing the faces of Palestinians. The program team showed a statement by Palestinian anti-occupation activist Izzat al-Karaki, who lives in the H2 area, as Israel calls it.
He explained how cameras and checkpoints control his daily life, as there are more than 22 Israeli checkpoints through which they recognize the person coming to them before they arrive.
Hebron residents know that all this forest of cameras is designed to protect settlers, not Palestinians, especially since it is not limited to the density of cameras in Palestinian neighborhoods, but also to their point towards residents' homes, as it is like an invasion of their privacy.
Matt Hammoudi, Amnesty International's researcher and consultant, said the Israeli authorities are trying to create a database of Palestinians' faces, and when they reach checkpoints, their information is already stored. Israel relies on electronic systems in which people's data is stored without their knowledge or consent, and they are dealt with according to machine algorithms, through which they have to pass into their daily lives, so that their lives are under the control of artificial intelligence.
On May 2, Amnesty International released a shocking report on what is happening in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, titled: Digital Apartheid, Israeli authorities use facial recognition technology to entrench an automated system of apartheid.
Over the course of 82 pages, the report explains the establishment by the occupation authorities of a complex technological system known as the "Red Wolf", to protect a settlement outpost located in the heart of the city. The Red Wolf system is deployed at military checkpoints in Hebron where it scans the faces of Palestinians, then adds them to huge databases for surveillance, without their consent.