[News] Israel can monitor every telephone call in West Bank and Gaza, says intelligence source

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Israel can monitor every telephone call in West Bank and Gaza, says
intelligence source 'Harsh invasion of privacy' provides Israeli Security
Agency a system of control over the Palestinians

November 15, 2021 - https://qudsnen.co/?p=31380

Israel can listen to every telephone conversation taking place in the West
Bank and Gaza, a former member of the Israeli Army’s elite signals
intelligence unit 8200 told Middle East Eye.

Every mobile or phone imported into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing
is implanted with an Israeli bug, and anyone using the only two mobile
networks serving the occupied territories – Jawwal and Wataniya – is being
monitored as well, the former signals intelligence member said.

At any given time, hundreds of soldiers are listening to the conversations
being conducted. The audio monitoring falls into two groups. The first is
Palestinians who are politically active or who represent a security threat
in Israel’s view. The second level of monitoring is used by Shin Bet, the
domestic security service to find “pressure points” in Palestinian society.

“It might be finding gays who can be pressured to report on their
relatives, or finding some man who is cheating on his wife. Finding someone
who owes money to someone, let’s say, means that he can be contacted and
offered money to pay his debt in exchange for his collaboration,” the army
veteran said.

“This is an entire world in which the Shin Bet can acquire power over
Palestinians that ultimately forces them to collaborate or reveal things
about other people, and it is all part of the system of control,” he said.

*Living without privacy*
The army veteran was speaking in the wake of the Washington Post’s
revelations about Blue Wolf, facial recognition technology that alerts
soldiers at checkpoints to detain suspects.

The “grunt work” of this system of mass surveillance is done by Jewish
Israeli soldiers who studied Arabic as part of their military service. They
are monitored by Druze soldiers or Jewish soldiers of Syrian descent for
whom Arabic is their mother tongue. They transcribe the conversations,
whose texts are translated and sent to the army’s intelligence units and to
Shin Bet.

He said there were no limits to Israel’s ability to invade Palestinians’
private and public lives. And there appear to be no limits as to what
soldiers do with the conversations they have intercepted.

“Sometimes these are private conversations, maybe even intimate
conversations. People who are soldiers in the army would laugh when they
heard sex talk. Soldiers save the conversations and send them to their
friends. This is a very harsh invasion of the privacy of every Palestinian
living there,” he said.

The soldiers who do this do not regard their surveillance as a moral or
ethical problem.

“The people around them, and their families, tell them that this is proper;
everyone supports them. Their commander, their parents, the state, their
friends… There is no reason that soldiers should think that what they are
doing is not okay,” he said.

The recent revelations about Pegasus and Blue Wolf are nothing new to
Palestinians who have grown up under constant surveillance.

The mass surveillance is so routine that army high command has had to
resort to create incentives to get soldiers to take photographs of
Palestinians passing through checkpoints.

Prizes were said to have been offered for the units that gathered the
greatest number of photos of Palestinians to add to the database described
by a former soldier as the army’s “Facebook for Palestinians”.

*‘System of control’*
Sometimes the purpose of taking photographs is none other than intimidation.

Muhammad Ragheb Salah, a former prisoner who spent 10 years in prison and
lives in the village of Burqa, near Nablus, had photographs of himself, his
ID and car, taken three times in 30 minutes at different checkpoints.

The third time this happened Salah confronted the soldier: “I got out of
the car and walked over to the soldier, asking him why he was doing this. I
told him that two other checkpoints stopped me just minutes ago and did the
same thing, and the soldier said that he’s only carrying out military
orders, and that he sends the photos he takes to the region’s military
commander through WhatsApp.”

Adnan Balawna, from Nablus, said that soldiers often either pick out
specific cars to photograph or choose to take pictures of all the cars that
go through the checkpoint.

“It worries me when the soldiers pick me out of a crowd of many people, it
gives me a lot of anxiety, especially if some attack were to be carried out
against soldiers at that checkpoint or even another one on the same day,
because that would put everyone who was photographed on that day under
investigation. That person would be potentially subject to interrogation,
even though they don’t have anything to do with what happened,” Balawna
said.

*International scrutiny*
Israel is coming under mounting international pressure for the use of its
spyware.

The US government blacklisted NSO Group, the creator of Pegasus software,
after cyber security campaigners obtained a leaked database of 50,000 phone
numbers selected by NSO Group clients. Candiru, a second Israeli spyware
firm, has been blacklisted. The US said the companies’ activities were
contrary to US national security interests.

Eitay Mack is a human rights lawyer who launched a campaign to expose
secretive Israeli arms sales, demanding that the country’s Ministry of
Defence release documents and records pertaining to the sale of weapons and
military systems to countries under military embargo, engaged in civil wars
and in systematic violation of human rights campaigns. Supreme Court
rejected his petition regarding tracking technology made by an Israeli
cyber company, and also shut the door on all future petitions.

Mack said: “From the Shin Bet standpoint, every Palestinian is a threat.
They are particularly bothered by nonviolent activists, because such people
can lead a popular movement and generate widespread protest, while also
evoking sympathy in the international community.

>From that standpoint, there is no Palestinian who is not a threat. No
Palestinian can be free of this,” Mack said.

Mack said this was not about monitoring or preventing attacks from
Palestinian militants.

“They know how to deal with terrorist organisations, but what worries them
most is civil society organisations, because they could lead to an end of
the occupation and they garner sympathy in the international community.”

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist from Hebron, said that what is new is
that surveillance can now be carried out by the ordinary soldier and by
settlers.

“This is what’s new – the soldier now knows everything about me before I
even meet him. I’ve been personally photographed by them countless times,
and through their programs they can know who I am before I reach a
checkpoint.”

Settlers also have a special camera system: “I might be walking down the
street and be assaulted and beaten by settlers because my name is Issa. I
am under surveillance everywhere; in the street, at home, on checkpoints,
anywhere. They even know about my comings and goings, my life is now on
livestream for them to see at will, nothing is private anymore.”
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