On Friday, the Israeli Supreme Court temporarily prevented the Israeli government from closing dozens of relief organizations operating in Gaza.
The groups had filed a lawsuit challenging new Israeli rules requiring them to reveal all names of Palestinian employees with the Israeli military.
In December, Israel ordered 37 international organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council, to stop their work in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within 60 days unless they agree to the new rules.
About 17 non-governmental organizations and the Association of International Development Agencies called for an urgent suspension of the decision in a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday, warning of serious humanitarian consequences.
Aid organizations say sharing employee information may pose a risk to their safety. Israeli forces were documented on hundreds of occasions during the past 2.5 years targeting aid workers – bombing aid organizations, assassinating workers and their families.
“We are still waiting to see how the state will interpret the injunction and whether it will increase our ability to act,” said Athena Rayburn, executive director of the Association of International Development Agencies, adding that the situation inside Gaza remains “catastrophic.”
Meanwhile, a new report by Jonathan Whittall at DropSite News found that, as Israel seeks to international aid organizations and the most established agency delivering aid: UNRWA, the U.S. is handing aid delivery in Gaza to private companies pursuing their own agendas. The most prominent of these is Palantir, a weapons company with a sordid history, which is now branching out into AI weaponry.
According to Whittall, “Palantir Technologies has a permanent desk at the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) headquarters in southern Israel, three sources from the diplomatic community inside the CMCC told Drop Site News. According to the sources, the artificial intelligence data analytics giant is providing the technological architecture for tracking the delivery and distribution of aid to Gaza.
“The presence of Palantir and other corporations—along with recent changes banning non-profits unwilling to give data to Israeli authorities—is creating a situation in which the delivery of aid is taking a backseat to the pursuit of profit, investment, and the training of AI products, experts say.
“‘The United Nations already has a humanitarian architecture in place to step in during crises, abiding by humanitarian principles and grounded in international law,’ UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese told Drop Site. ‘This profit-driven parallel system involving companies like Palantir, already linked to Israel’s unlawful conduct, can only be regarded as a monstrosity.’
“The CMCC was established by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in October, one week after the so-called ceasefire went into effect in Gaza to “monitor implementation of the ceasefire” and “help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza.” Last week, at the inaugural summit of the Board of Peace in Washington, D.C., Major General Jasper Jeffers—who was tapped in January to lead the International Stabilization Force in Gaza—announced that the CMCC will serve as the Board of Peace’s operational headquarters.
“According to the sources, a representative from Palantir sits in the CMCC operations room where aid convoys and distributions inside Gaza are monitored through drone surveillance. The representative integrates convoy and distribution-related data into Palantir’s systems, the sources said.”
