Digital Rights Weekly Update: 25 Sep - 1 Oct 2026

Policy Insight:

This week’s stories highlight the growing importance of technology not only in facilitating rights violations, but also in documenting them. Newly updated Google Maps imagery offers powerful visual evidence of the scale of destruction across Gaza, underscoring the importance of preserving and scrutinising digital evidence when documenting grave war crimes. At 7amleh, our work on Big Tech similarly seeks to document how corporate platforms, infrastructure and technologies can become entangled in and facilitate crimes against humanity.

We also joined more than 60 civil society organisations and experts calling for a global moratorium on frontier AI. This is not a minor concern for us: we have witnessed how AI and automated systems can be weaponised in Palestine to commit war crimes on an industrial scale, making safeguards and accountability over such technologies more urgent than ever. Meanwhile, Palestine’s preparations for 4G and growing discussion around AI governance underline the need to ensure technological development advances rights, rather than reproducing systems of control.

News Digest:

New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza

The Guardian 

An update to Google Maps has revealed the extent of devastation during the three-year Gaza war and the severity of the continuing humanitarian crisis faced by the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants.

The images were taken in June this year and show further destruction of homes, businesses, places of worship and infrastructure since a fragile ceasefire came into effect almost 12 months ago. The images also show massive damage to northern towns such as Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, as well as the destruction of places of worship such as the Istiqlal mosque in Khan Younis. Major neighbourhoods in Gaza City such as Jabaliya and Shuja’iya, which were targeted in repeated Israeli offensives, are clearly now uninhabitable.

More than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters in Gaza, where about 82% of structures – roughly 200,000 buildings – have been damaged, with about two-thirds of those destroyed, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

How Big Tech Became Entangled in Israel’s Genocidal War on Palestinians

Days of Palestine 

As Israel’s war on Palestinians increasingly relies on surveillance, artificial intelligence, telecommunications and vast quantities of data, activists and human rights organizations are turning greater attention to the technology companies whose products and infrastructure can become part of that military system.

The debate is no longer confined to companies that manufacture weapons. It increasingly concerns cloud platforms that store intelligence, telecommunications networks that generate location data, artificial-intelligence systems that process information and corporations whose technology can help transform civilian data into military intelligence. Apple has become one of the latest targets of that scrutiny. Activists have organized demonstrations outside Apple stores in the United States and elsewhere, accusing the company of maintaining close ties with Israel’s technology sector while failing to adequately address concerns raised by employees and campaigners over the war in Gaza.

The Technology Industries in Israel Origins, Structures, and Colonial Dimension

Institute for Palestine Studies

A chapter from the Institute for Palestine Studies examines the origins, evolution, and political dimensions of Israel's technology sector. The chapter traces the economic, political, and social forces that shaped these industries, arguing that they must be understood within their broader ideological and settler-colonial context. It emphasizes that analyzing Israel’s high-tech sector requires engaging directly with the structures of power, exclusion, and violence that underpin its global branding as the "Start-Up Nation." 

60+ civil society organisations and experts call for a global moratorium on frontier AI

Business and Human Rights Centre

60+ civil society organisations call for an immediate global moratorium on the development, deployment and sale of ‘frontier AI’ which are advanced or autonomous AI models that have the potential to cause severe or widespread harm to humans until binding safeguards, independent oversight and effective enforcement mechanisms are in place.

Developers from some of the world’s largest AI companies now accept the need to slow the reckless development of the most powerful and potentially dangerous AI systems. This is a significant admission from the companies leading the race: AI capabilities are advancing faster than the safeguards needed to control them.

Palestine Prepares to Launch 4G: What Will Change for Mobile Internet Users?

Al-Madina

After years of mobile network users in the West Bank relying on 3G networks, Palestine is preparing to transition to a new phase with the upcoming launch of 4G services. This move is set to transform the mobile internet experience in terms of speed, response time (latency), and the networks' capacity to handle larger volumes of users and data.

This preparation follows statements by the Minister of Telecom and Digital Economy, Abdul Razaq Natsheh, confirming that 4G services will be available soon in Palestine. He emphasized that Jawwal (Palestine Telecommunications Company) and Ooredoo Palestine are technically ready to provide the service, adding that the transition to 4G will mean higher data transfer quality, faster speeds, and lower prices.