Gaza and Artificial Intelligence

Gaza has paid a heavy price for what can be called “the sustainability of intelligence,” not because it possessed these technologies, but because it was one of the fields where they were tested and employed in their cruelest forms. Modern warfare is not only conducted with traditional weapons, but with artificial intelligence systems where data, algorithms, and automated decision-making intersect, redefining the meaning of control and dominance. In this context, Gaza was an intense space to experiment with how smart technology can be used against humans instead of for them.

Recent years have revealed that artificial intelligence is no longer confined to economics, medicine, or education, but has become a structural part of war and security systems. In Gaza, big data analysis techniques, pattern recognition, and predictive systems have been used in multiple areas: from continuous surveillance via drones, to communication analysis, to target classification systems that turn humans into “data points.” These technologies, globally marketed as tools of efficiency and accuracy, have in the Gazan reality transformed into tools for accelerating killing and reducing the distance between decision and destruction.

The price Gaza paid extended to civilian areas no less dangerous. Digital infrastructure was paralyzed, from communication networks to health and educational databases, leading to the loss or destruction of a massive amount of vital data. Hospitals were disrupted not only due to bombing, but due to the collapse of their supporting technical systems, from patient management systems to devices linked to medical records and therapeutic interventions. Education suffered when digital platforms were cut off, records were lost, and access to knowledge declined in a world that has come to rely on artificial intelligence as a primary medium for learning.

The price was not only material, but cognitive and ethical. What happened in Gaza contributed to the entrenchment of a dangerous model: a model that shows that artificial intelligence can operate with high efficiency in environments lacking any ethical balance or legal accountability. Thus, algorithms transformed into an invisible actor, unaccountable, yet leaving a profound impact on people's lives and future. This makes Gaza a stark example of the failure of the global discourse on “responsible artificial intelligence” when tested in a context of unequal power.

Despite this grim reality, the paradox is that artificial intelligence itself can be part of the path to recovery, reconstruction, and prosperity, not as a magical Aladdin's lamp, but as a tool that, if ethically and humanely reoriented, AI technologies can be used to accurately document damages initially, by analyzing satellite images to estimate urban and environmental losses, contributing to reconstruction planning on fair scientific bases. It can support the health sector through remote diagnostic models and smart systems for managing medical resources in an environment suffering from scarce capabilities.

Education, in turn, opens an important horizon for re-flourishing. AI educational tools provide flexible learning platforms, capable of overcoming spatial constraints and delivering customized content to students in exceptional circumstances. AI can play a role in preserving Gaza's collective memory, through archiving testimonies, analyzing narratives, and confronting deliberate digital misinformation.

This transformation requires a fundamental condition: shifting artificial intelligence from a position of control to a position of service, and from a logic of dominance to a logic of justice. It is impossible to talk about technological prosperity in Gaza without building digital sovereignty, data protection, rehabilitating basic infrastructure, and involving local competencies in designing solutions, not importing ready-made models detached from reality. Here, artificial intelligence becomes not just a technology, but a political and ethical choice.

Gaza's experience shows that the real question is no longer: What can artificial intelligence do? But rather: For whom does it work, and under what value system? Between destruction and reconstruction, artificial intelligence stands on the same edge as humanity. And the choice, in the end, is not merely technical, but eminently human.