Category World News

According to a joint investigation by The Guardian, + 972 Magazine, and Local Call, Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit kept sizable amounts of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s cloud servers.

The secretive intelligence branch of the Israeli military, Unit 8200, has been building the surveillance system since 2022. The device makes it possible for the unit to capture and retain recordings of millions of Palestinian calls made every day in the West Bank and Gaza.

Leaked Microsoft documents and testimonies from 11 sources, including those from Israeli military intelligence and the company, were the source of the revelations that were initially reported on Wednesday.

According to the leaks, a significant portion of the data appeared to be being stored on Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands and Ireland, according to the Guardian.

According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based system influenced operations across the occupied Palestinian territories and prevented deadly airstrikes.

According to Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who had a meeting with Yossi Sariel’s commander in Unit 8200 in 2021, was unaware of the nature of the stored data. No “evidence has been found” that Azure or its artificial intelligence (AI) tools were being “used to target or harm people,” according to the company.

The revelations follow Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory,’s report identifying the businesses supporting Israel’s occupation and occupation of Gaza.

According to the report, Microsoft, which has been in Israel since 1991, has begun integrating its technologies into the country’s military, police, prisons, schools, and settlements.

The business has developed ties to Israeli defense since 2003, acquiring cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups, and embedding its systems in military operations. An Israeli colonel referred to cloud services like those provided by Microsoft as “a weapon in every way” in 2024.

According to The Guardian, Nadella reportedly offered to help with Sariel’s effort to move large amounts of military intelligence into the cloud according to internal records at Microsoft.

According to a Microsoft statement that the Guardian cited, “is not accurate” to say that he personally supported the project.

Later, Microsoft engineers collaborated with Israeli intelligence to incorporate security measures into Azure, enabling the transfer of up to 70% of Unit 8200’s sensitive data.

Despite Israeli officials’ claims that the technology halts attacks, Unit 8200 sources claimed that the system randomly collects communications, which are frequently used to detain or blackmail Palestinians. One source quoted as saying, “When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason,” “that’s where they find the excuse.”

According to some sources, the stored data was used to justify killings and detentions.

The expansion of the system caused a wider shift in Israeli surveillance, moving from targeted tracking to comprehensive monitoring of the Palestinian population. Text messages reportedly receive risk scores based on a set of trigger words, such as martyrdom or weapons-related discussions.

Sariel had long advocated cloud-based surveillance and left in 2024 as a result of Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7, 2023.

The surveillance program is still active as Israel’s war against Gaza drags on, with more than 61 Palestinians killed, among them 18, 000 children. According to sources, military operations are still being conducted using the existing data and AI tools.

Khan Younes, Gaza: When you’re lost, you’re no longer a human being.

Sometimes, it’s a phone, a faithful companion of your joys and sorrows, your sweetest moments and the darkest of your pain.

It turns into more than just a tool in the harsh conditions of life in the largest open-air prison in the world. It serves as your gateway to the outside world, your way to communicate with loved ones either inside or outside of the prison.

Sometimes you can see joy and beauty through its lens, but more often than not, it only shows falling rockets or the remains of their occupants.

What, however, does the genocidal chaos leave you with when that devoted companion vanishes?

My phone incurred injuries, which caused it to collapse.

My phone incurred injuries, which caused it to collapse..

I find it hard to believe I’m describing it in this way, using the same phrase I use when reporting on the deaths of thousands of people who were denied urgent medical care and who were simply punished for surviving Israeli bombs.

My phone, however, fought its share of this persistent Israeli cruelty, suffocation caused by dust and sand, suffocation from overheated tents, and constant torment from poor connection.

Everyone has a limit on their endurance, so it made an effort to hold on. In the midst of frantic stampeding crowds, it fell the day we left our damaged home for our 14th displacement.

It managed to survive the severe blow, but it only endured 70 days after its body blistered and its screen cracked before its wounds became too painful to bear.

Then it permanently went dark.

Oddly, I felt comforted. I wasn’t alone because it wasn’t painful, not to mention that. I’ve witnessed the same thing happen to others: Friends and family members who are slowly losing their phones, just like their loved ones.

Strangely, these minor, shared losses bring us comfort. We expect our phones to not function despite the loss of our loved ones and our state of health. They actually endured this long, which is a miracle.

Smartphone addiction is frequently used as a buzzword. However, if you’re lucky enough to still have one, it’s just for life in Gaza.

It’s a break. You cling to a tiny, glowing portal. It makes it easier to scurry back in time while scrolling through memories or staring at loved ones’ faces, which are now names on graves or which still conjure you up.

Their beautiful smiles are still preserved in your phone’s emotionless memory. It makes you accessible to voices you otherwise cannot hear and people you can’t reach. Instead of healing the pain, it distracts you.

Like you’re starving and can’t seem to stop yourself, you scroll through the endless menus of mouthwatering food and make fun of it.

While your table is buried beneath rubble, you watch strangers eating dinner with your family. You may be wondering how dare to post such scenes when nearby children are starving to death. And yet you continue to scroll because it temporarily acts as a calming sedative.

Are you still alive?

Finding a new companion is a necessity when reporting daily on the ongoing genocide in the world. However, Gaza’s quest is disastrous.

There are plenty of options, even the most recent high-end brands that somehow managed to survive the blockade, despite the fact that life has crumbled and bread is scarce here.

The cost of a phone is also very high because this is Gaza, where a bag of flour costs $ 700.

Even the best-quality phones in makeshift stores are sold for more than the building costs, which are further inflated by the genocidal environment.

And it doesn’t end there. In a place where the only thing that is free is your breath, you must pay in cash.

An iPhone might cost $1, 000 elsewhere, but here it costs $4, 200.

You then look for less expensive options and hope for something more reasonably priced, but the calculations are the same.

By spending such incomprehensible amounts, you are confirming the very reality your captors are trying to impose, and you are doing it with your own money, which is not me.

You are aware of how you are influencing their style. During this genocidal siege, we are already drained of whatever is left in our pockets just for flour. We don’t know how long it will last.

So you hold onto what you already have in order to avoid having to pay your price at a GHF center for the deadly “aid” you never receive.

I’ve been feeling paralyzed for a while, which became especially acute during Israel’s two-week total communication blackout, during which time my phone finally died in complete silence.

More than just being unable to check on loved ones when the captor cuts yet another lifeline. This prevents the call for ambulances. Unheard, in the dark, that is how a wounded person might perish.

Someone is out there making cruel decisions about when you can contact the world or be contacted so that you can say, “Are you alive?”

Israel’s expulsion orders are cruel ironic because they are issued online even as Gaza’s citizens are unable to access the networks they depend on. Only when you witness thousands of people strewn across the streets and the earth trembling from Israeli attacks are you able to tell.

Your digital lifeline’s hand has been colonizing and blocking your land for years.

And you are certain that if they could obstruct the air you breathe, they would not rebuff.

You rise therefore.

There are times when I try to call someone or check something with my hand still touching nothing.

I no longer have my companion. Under both digital and physical blockade, I remain phoneless and helpless.

Then you begin to compare your chains to the wealth your captors possess, giving you unmatched access to every technological advantage and luxury.

On the other hand, you are being hunted down by the tech giants whose tools are assisting your destruction using the most advanced weapons in the world.

You just want to let everyone know you’re still here, despite the use of satellites and precision-guided missiles.

How significant a missing companion was to you. It wasn’t just a phone, either. Your witness, your shield, and your sword were all in one.

And in the face of this tyranny, surrendering is something you cannot afford. You rise therefore..

Because we refuse to be massacred in silence, you whisper, “Rest in power, my companion.”

Ahmed Aaed, a Palestinian boy, finds solace in caring for feral cats in Gaza. Due to the Israeli-imposed food and medicine shortage, he shared his grief over one kitten he was unable to save.