Israel Used AI-Assisted Technology to Destroy Infrastructure in Gaza
By: Neha Madhira
August 12, 2026
An ongoing system of surveillance and policing in Occupied Palestine by Israel, aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI), can be traced back to the 2010s, when facial recognition was being “tested” at checkpoints and large information databases through cyber warfare programs. As Israel continues its most recent genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, the Occupation heavily relies on AI-assisted tools, majorly funded by the U.S.
In the first two months after October 2023, Lavender, an AI program created by the Israeli military as part of Unit 8200, specifically to automate “kill lists,” generated at least 37,000 recommendations for “human targets,” as reported by +972 Magazine in April 2024. Officers reportedly spent as little as 20 seconds reviewing each target before approving strikes, with human oversight often serving as little more than a "rubber stamp." With a reported error rate of around 10%, the system misidentified thousands of civilians.
Sarah Dweik, a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), spoke with Palestine Square about ‘Predatory State,' a 200-page report recently released by the organization detailing Israel's gendered violence against Palestinians, including the use of AI-assisted technologies and the systematic targeting of reproductive health and freedom.
" What we saw happening in Gaza, the levels of destruction and the genocide, showcase how domicide is not only facilitated by people, but in Gaza it was facilitated by surveillance technologies and AI,” Dweik said. “Between October 7th and October 15th, 2023, because of AI-facilitated systems that were used to target homes and people, we had already seen 47 Palestinian families completely eliminated from the civil registry.”
Citing the report, Dweik said that by April 2025, more than 90% of the infrastructure destroyed in Gaza had been targeted using AI. Dweik noted from the report.
“ Not only do we see the systemic gendered nature of Israel's actions that are targeting homes, individuals, families, and generations to eliminate and attack Palestinian futurity, but also the ability to have a safe place to nurture and take care of oneself and others,” Dweik said. “ We do talk a little bit about how coded data would also support some ground operations that IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] soldiers would parade and take photos of, championing the destruction that they had created.”
Dweik added that most of Israel's ground sieges described in the report relied on the results that AI systems would produce. “These AI systems were to create places to target, and then that could be where others would follow, such as continuing to bulldoze homes that were bombed, cemeteries, etc.”
Other specific AI systems include ‘Where's Daddy?' which uses lists generated by Lavender to geographically track Palestinians and alert intelligence officers when they return to their family homes at night; ‘Gospel,' which accelerates the generation and selection of physical strike locations; and ‘Wolf Pack,' a biometric intelligence database used to profile and store biometric data belonging to Palestinians. Wolf Pack includes smaller tools such as ‘Blue Wolf,' a mobile application that allows soldiers to upload photographs of Palestinians into the database.
Most of these AI systems were first reported to have been used during Israel's attacks in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank in May 2021 or at military checkpoints before becoming “fully operational” by October 2023. Alma Barry, a teacher and resident of Nablus, said Israeli soldiers will go as far as to keep leaderboards using Wolf Pack programs, where they compete and try to upload as many pictures of Palestinians as possible.
“ Not only will they take pictures of your documents, your identification card, or maybe your passport if you're a foreigner, but also they'll take pictures of the passengers in the car or the driver, especially if they're male,” Barry said. “ Throughout the highways, not just at checkpoints, there [are] cameras that scan the faces using software facial recognition of everyone in the vehicle. The caveat is that a lot of us aren't paying attention to what's AI here since they are not announcing it.”
Barry said she would not be surprised if Israeli soldiers were using the same software systems for prisoners and others to arrest them on arbitrary charges by monitoring chats and phone call logs. Even though neither the IOF nor the U.S. military explicitly states that the U.S. funds these AI systems, Dweik said that, through the PFC's research, the team found direct collaboration with U.S.-based companies, such as Meta and Palantir.
On May 18, 2024, Sada Social revealed that Meta collaborated with Project Lavender by providing data from WhatsApp groups containing the names of Palestinians or activists wanted by Israel. In December of 2025, Palantir co-founder Alex Karp wrote in his book that the company was extensively supporting various ground attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, including the 2024 exploding pager attacks in Lebanon that killed over 40 people and injured around 3,500.
“ We also understand the tools and the technologies that kill our people in Palestine are also being used in the U.S.,” Dweik said. “The American Immigration Council came out with research in 2025 that said that ICE is currently using Palantir's AI system to track immigrants' movements and flag individuals for targeted action, which is very similar to the functionality that Project Lavender is used for in Gaza. Amazon has also collaborated with Flock to do the same thing.”
Wes Bryant, an author and retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant, spoke to Palestine Square about why he shifted his research to speak out against “egregious, tragic strikes against the Palestinian population.”
“ To watch the excuses and some of these so-called experts on the support of the side of the [Israeli military], the Israeli government, come out and say, ‘Israeli military is actually adhering to international law, and they're carrying out the best practices in civilian harm mitigation,' I just saw right through that and I felt compelled to speak,” Bryant said. “ It's fascinating because throughout my whole career, I had little-to-no interaction with the Israeli military, which is interesting as far as the U.S.'s blind support of their war in Gaza since. The U.S. gives more military aid to them than any other partners or allies.”
Bryant noted that most people do not realize how AI integration is biased “because it can be a reflection of the biases of the entity that's using or programming it.”
“ If AI actually is not used responsibly, ethically, and transparently, and there's no proper governance both by a host nation or any nation using it and by the international community, then it can be a tool for incredible atrocity,” Bryant said. “I mean, what we're seeing in Gaza and then what we see played out both in [the] U.S.'s Yemen campaign and then especially in the Iran war is how many so-called ‘targets' can be sourced with this incredibly reckless use of AI.”
Dr. Mimi Syed, an emergency medical physician who went on two medical missions to Gaza in 2024, co-authored a June 2026 report with Bryant about the IOF's use of quadcopters throughout the ongoing genocide, specifically focused on the targeting of children. Based on medical imaging and forensic analysis of injuries treated in Gaza between August and September 2024, the report identified a pattern of “highly precise and troubling applications of lethal force utilizing small tactical ‘sniper' drones against children,” with wound assessment morphology demonstrating that the shots “were made at a particular angle and with a specific type of projectile.”
The IOF uses private defense technology companies, such as Smart Shooter, to design quadcopters and use AI algorithms for “lock-on targeting” or “threat detection.” United Nations experts established that the IOF's use of AI-driven systems has directly caused the death of thousands of Palestinian children. Regardless of this evidence, Israel has spearheaded funding into Smart Shooter by boasting its system's precision, and the U.S. military has followed suit. At least $31.7 million has been spent by the U.S. on Smart Shooter contracts with Israel.
Dweik emphasized the importance of continuing the research of AI-assisted technologies being used in warfare, and also that she does not see enough reporting in Western media about the extent to which the Israeli occupation uses AI to “map, categorize, and gather data” on Palestinian lives.
“ If the people training these systems are already embedded into these gendered logics about Palestinians, interpreting Palestinian men as these brutal, oppressive people, then it doesn't matter how many human checks [of AI] were mandated,” Dweik said. “It would always still result in anti-Palestinian bias and the continued colonization of Palestine because that's the goal at hand for this predatory state, right? There's no way to make a more ethical AI bombing machine.”
