It depends on who you ask, which is precisely the problem. On paper, many of these technologies are described as civilian, for border management, public safety and urban infrastructure. In practice, the line between civilian and military use is almost always blurred, particularly in authoritarian contexts and active conflict zones.

In the MENA region, facial recognition cameras are used to monitor activists, journalists, migrants and political opponents. Biometric systems restrict movement and access. Predictive policing tools pre-emptively flag people based on algorithmic profiling. Technologies marketed as urban management solutions can function as instruments of mass surveillance when deployed by governments without democratic accountability or judicial oversight.

In Palestine, these technologies are integrated into the architecture of occupation. Surveillance networks in the West Bank determine whether a Palestinian can pass a checkpoint, go to work, see their family or access healthcare. AI-assisted systems in Gaza have generated target lists containing documented inaccuracies and minimal human oversight in the decision chain.

There is also a commercial logic to this. Israeli companies explicitly market their surveillance and weapons technologies as ‘battlefield-tested’, meaning they have been developed and refined through military operations in Palestine. This is used as a selling point for European border agencies. The occupation functions, in part, as a commercial laboratory.

The human rights impacts are severe and well documented. AI surveillance systems funded by the EU detect, intercept and push migrants and asylum seekers back before they can make asylum claims. Investigations have found that security forces in countries receiving EU migration funding have committed serious human rights violations against migrants, including forced displacement, physical violence and sexual assault. The infrastructure the EU helps build does not protect people in transit. In many documented cases, it places them in greater danger.

Impacts on Palestinians operate at multiple levels. In the West Bank, an automated surveillance network controls daily life in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with basic rights such as freedom of movement, privacy and protection from discrimination. Amnesty International’s 2023 report documented how facial recognition systems supplied in part by European companies have given Israeli authorities ‘unprecedented powers of control’ over Palestinians. Palestinian activists and journalists have been targeted with spyware, including tools from companies that received EU investment funding.

In Gaza, AI-assisted targeting has been deployed in conditions that violate core principles of international humanitarian law, including the distinction between combatants and civilians, proportionality and the obligation of precaution. Around 67,000 deaths have been officially reported, the majority civilians. Ten per cent of the population has been killed or injured. A study published in The Lancet found that life expectancy in Gaza was halved within the first year of the war. These figures are, according to most experts, likely an undercount.

The connection is both structural and specific. In 2020, Frontex, the EU’s border agency, awarded €100 million (approx. US$116 million) in contracts to two Israeli companies, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), to operate surveillance drones over the Mediterranean. Each received €50 million (approx. US$58 million), IAI for its Heron drone and Elbit for its Hermes 900. Both platforms are AI-equipped. Both have been actively deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza for surveillance, target detection and strikes, in a campaign the International Court of Justice has found involves plausible acts of genocide.

This illustrates the broader pattern: the EU is financially sustaining Israeli weapons companies directly involved in military operations in Gaza. The European Defence Fund, European Investment Fund and Horizon Europe have all channelled money to Israeli companies, many of which have links to the Israeli military or to spyware development. Europe accounted for 45 per cent of Israeli arms exports in 2024, a close to 20 per cent increase from 2023, coinciding with the escalation in Gaza.

In response to a parliamentary question in September 2025, the EU Commission acknowledged that Israel was violating human rights and humanitarian law. And yet, as of today, the EU Council has not yet approved a proposal to partially suspend Israeli entities from Horizon Europe, put forward in July 2025. Despite the evidence, some member states continue to block it. This is not a knowledge problem; it is a political problem, and there are no rules that could force a different outcome.

The starting point is to stop weakening frameworks that already exist, such as the AI Act, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Dual-Use Regulation, which are all currently under pressure from a deregulation agenda. That direction needs to reverse.

Beyond that, there are specific measures that follow directly from the evidence. The partial suspension of Israeli entities from Horizon Europe must be implemented. The proposal exists; what doesn’t exist is the political will to approve it.

The EU AI Act must be extended to cover exports, closing the inconsistency that allows systems that are prohibited or classified as high-risk in the EU to be sold freely to other countries. Binding human rights due diligence must be mandatory for all exports of AI systems and dual-use technologies, regardless of company size. The current thresholds are too high to be meaningful.

Migration agreements must be subject to formal, public human rights impact assessments prior to signature, assessed independently, not internally, and published. The EU Ombudsman has already recommended this, but the EU Commission has declined to implement it.

The broader question of arms exports to Israel requires a political answer. The EU cannot position itself as a defender of international humanitarian law while being one of Israel’s primary arms markets.

Civil society has a critical role to play, particularly because the accountability mechanisms within EU institutions are insufficient.

The most immediate need is documentation. There is a need for rigorous, specific and public research into funding flows: who allocates resources, who receives them, which technologies are being deployed and in what context. Much of what is known about EU funding of Israeli companies came from civil society researchers and investigative journalists, not from the institutions themselves. That work needs to continue and expand.

Civil society also needs to scrutinise the organisations that receive EU funding to run migration programmes, including technology deployment, in the field.

At the international level, the findings of United Nations Special Rapporteurs and proceedings before international courts are legally and politically significant. Those findings must be treated as the serious legal and political statements they are, not absorbed as background documentation.

In the medium term, we need to build broader coalitions across digital rights, migration advocacy and Palestine solidarity movements. And because the composition of the European Parliament shapes what is possible on arms exports, AI regulation and migration policy, it’s key to engage voters and build public understanding ahead of its 2029 elections.

The opaque character of funding flows, procurement decisions and technology transfers poses a major challenge. The further the distance between a decision made in Brussels and its consequences on the ground, the easier it is to avoid accountability. Advocacy, journalism and research must close that distance by making the connections public.