Digital Rights Weekly Update: 8 - 14 May 2026

News Digest

Microsoft fires head of Israeli subsidiary and other managers over surveillance of Palestinians

PC Gamer

As reported by Globes, Microsoft has ousted Alon Haimovich, the general manager of its Israeli subsidiary, as well as other managers from the division, following an internal investigation. The decision is further fallout from a 2025 report from The Guardian and +972 Magazine on Israel's use of Microsoft Azure cloud services to store data intercepted in the illegally occupied West Bank. According to Globes, a Microsoft investigative team began work last month over concerns that the Israeli subsidiary was exposing the company to legal liability in Europe. The Azure servers used by the Israeli government to store surveillance data were based in Europe, potentially putting Microsoft at risk from scrutiny by EU regulators. After investigating Haimovich and his team, Microsoft ousted the GM and other, unnamed senior staff at the subsidiary. While the company searches for a new GM, Microsoft Israel has been placed under the management of Microsoft France.

After bombs, blackouts and bank restrictions, Gaza’s digital workers are still coding

AP News

More than 75% of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure was damaged during the war, and power outages often made it difficult to fulfill contracts. “When we first started, the main problem was electricity and internet access. Now that’s less of an issue because workspaces have opened across Gaza,” software engineer Sharif Naim said. During the war, Naim founded Taqat Gaza, a coworking space powered by solar generators, giving remote workers an opportunity to work in three-hour shifts. Today, it caters to more than 500 freelancers, offering a full day of internet access and networking opportunities that Naim said were seen as equally useful. “The focus (today) is creating a proper work environment, training and helping freelancers rebuild skills lost during the war so they can compete in the global market again,” he said. Part of that has been aimed toward women, many of whom became breadwinners or needed to seek additional income amid the war.

There’s an app for that: Gaza’s developers use tech to solve war problems

Al Jazeera

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – In a small corner inside the Taqat Gaza co-working space, Saja al-Ghoul sat working on her latest mobile app idea. The 23-year-old programmer, like her colleagues working from the space, is focused on developing apps that can help solve some of the difficulties of living in the Palestinian enclave. Identifying a problem is not difficult; two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and a ceasefire that has not stopped attacks, or allowed for proper reconstruction to take place, mean that the enclave is teeming with crises. Saja’s app is called “Waselni” – Arabic for “help me reach my destination”. She aims to help alleviate the transportation problems Palestinians in Gaza face. The app allows people to share rides and coordinate trips with one another to reduce transportation costs, which have risen dramatically in recent months. It also includes a prepaid electronic wallet to bypass the worsening cash crisis brought on by the war. “Anyone can propose a trip, for example, from al-Shifa area to as-Saraya in central Gaza City at 8am, and then other people can join the same ride and split the cost,” Saja explained.

Field Testing Israeli Occupation Tech: The Palestine Lab

Washington Report On Middle East Affairs

The infrastructure behind these systems is military and involves corporate complicity. Abukhater named Microsoft, Google and Amazon as holding contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, providing services, he said, during a time of genocide. Accountability, he argued, must extend to them. And pressure can work, particularly from within: employees can organize, refuse to work on technologies of oppression and speak publicly. Beyond that, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions remain powerful tools available to ordinary people. Yet corporate complicity does not operate in a vacuum. It is reinforced by an apartheid legislative framework designed to entrench the same asymmetries. Halper pointed to recently approved legislation including an Israeli death penalty law for terrorism that, by design, can only be applied to Palestinians. In cases of documented settler violence against Palestinians, he noted, conviction under that same law would be effectively impossible.