Digital Rights Weekly Update: 22 - 28 May 2026

Policy Insight:

This week’s developments reinforce a warning that has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Whether through the digitization of land registration systems that facilitate annexation, the expansion of surveillance and military technologies linked to violations against Palestinians, or the growing use of AI in warfare, technology is being deployed in ways that reshape rights, power, and accountability.

At the same time, the stories highlighted this week also point to the importance of documentation, evidence gathering, and public scrutiny. Efforts to archive violations, investigate the role of technology companies, and expose the human consequences of digital systems remain essential tools for accountability.

As digital transformation accelerates globally and within Palestine, the challenge is not simply adopting new technologies, but ensuring they are governed by human rights principles, transparency, and meaningful oversight. The stakes are increasingly clear: the future of digital governance will have direct consequences for justice, rights, and democratic accountability.

News Digest

Occupying State launches online system for registration of the territory of State of Palestine

Wafa News Agency

JERUSALEM, May 27, 2026 (WAFA) – Israel, the occupying state, launched on Wednesday morning an online system for the registration of the territory of the occupied State of Palestine (occupied West Bank). Israel launched the “Land Registry and Settlement of Rights” online system, codenamed “ Grenade,” amid open endorsement from Jewish supremacist Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook, who described it as “a central pillar in applying sovereignty in the territory and strengthening Israeli hold on Judea and Samaria.” Israel uses the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy. The Jerusalem Governorate stated that the online system is a tool to further entrench the unlawful seizure of Palestinian land through the restructuring of the land registration system in a manner that serves annexation and control plans, all under the guise of modernization of the digital land registry.

Europe facilitates the expansion of companies linked to the genocide in Palestine

NOVACT

Technologies developed and tested in the context of the genocide in Palestine are entering the European security market. This is the warning raised in the report The Gateways of Genocide Technology into Europe, published by the Observatory of Human Rights and Business in the Mediterranean (ODHE), SUDS, NOVACT and Irídia – Centre for the Defence of Human Rights. The investigation identifies nine pathways through which the Israeli defence tech sector is penetrating Europe. This ecosystem includes military, cybersecurity, surveillance, drone and artificial intelligence companies linked to the occupation, apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian population. According to the report, since October 2023 this sector has experienced significant growth driven by the escalation of Israeli violence, which has turned Palestinian territory into both a laboratory and a showcase for Israeli military and technological products. At the same time, the war has also accelerated the relocation abroad of many Israeli companies. Difficulties in accessing capital, declining foreign investment and disruptions caused by the war have pushed many companies to seek new destinations from which to operate. According to the investigation, one in five Israeli technology companies has moved part of its operations outside Israel since the beginning of the genocide.

Data, Decisions, and Death: Examining the Role of AI in Contemporary Warfare

Arab Reform Initiative

Recent conflicts in the Middle East have painted a recurring picture of disproportionate civilian harm in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been at the forefront of public reporting, with the Israeli army using AI to identify and generate targets at unprecedented speed. What was once a human-led process of intelligence gathering and verification is now, in part, delegated to machines capable of producing thousands of target recommendations in a fraction of the time. While the Israeli army argues these systems enhance precision, the growing body of evidence suggests a more troubling reality: the acceleration of warfare has also meant the acceleration of civilian deaths. The use of AI is not the sole cause of this outcome, rather, as Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham described, “What AI did was allow Israel to achieve the effective results of carpet bombing without losing the legitimacy of a data-driven assault with targets and objectives.” 

Technologies of distinction for indiscriminate killing: What can the Israeli war on Gaza teach us about the social meaning of AI

Sage Journals

AI is widely viewed as a technology of distinction and personalization. This article challenges this view by looking closely at the Israeli intelligence's use of AI in the Gaza War. Why was AI needed to produce what seems like indiscriminate mass killing of civilians and destruction of whole neighborhoods? Solving the paradox requires understanding technology within the legal, structural, cultural, and moral contexts in which it is embedded. AI was used to dramatically accelerate target production, since the Israeli military has adopted the “lethalness” doctrine (aspiring to maximize killing) but had also embedded international humanitarian law (which requires distinction between military targets and civilians) within its organizational structures, with lawyers in the kill-chain. AI was needed not to personalize treatment but to justify uniform treatment (bombing) by creating personalized justifications. It legitimated mass killing and destruction by automatically fusing and analyzing data to transform thousands of individuals and buildings into “legitimate targets” with individual probability scores (this deviated from traditional intelligence epistemology, requiring cultural work to overcome resistance). 

London mayor Khan blocks £50 million deal between Israel-linked Palantir and Met Police

The New Arab

Hamdache stressed that Palantir has "repeatedly shown contempt for international law through the development of surveillance and AI technology used as part of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trump’s ICE immigration inhumane crackdown operations, and the recent disturbing manifesto published by the company." "Londoners do not want our public services associated with corporations that profit from war and human suffering." Hamdache, however, warned that the Met still has contracts with Palantir worth nearly £500,000 that haven’t been challenged, and urged similar action regarding them. Palantir has worked with at least two other major UK entities, the National Health Service (NHS) and the Ministry of Defence. The US firm has come under fire in recent years following its work with the Israeli military. In 2024, the spy company signed a deal to begin supplying the Israeli army with advanced data analytics and AI in support of war-related missions, amid the genocidal war in Gaza which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp, said he is "exceedingly proud" of the firm’s involvement in what he called "operationally crucial operations in Israel".