Hebron, a laboratory for both technology and violence, reflects the Israeli occupation's impact on daily life, with sterilized roads, military checkpoints, and settler violence defining the landscape.
This journey unveils the complex layers of trauma, dispossession, and dehumanization, challenging preconceptions and raising questions about freedom and oppression. Longread by. We are staring down at the barrel of an automatic rifle, held by a nineteen-year-old.
In the spring of , my colleague journalist Florian Schmitz and I are guided by a group of former Israeli soldiers who started the group Breaking the Silence in March to shine a light on the countless atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Palestine.
They kindly offered us a private tour of Hebron so we can see the impacts of surveillance firsthand. The Israeli occupation of Palestine has been a breeding ground for technologies like drones, facial recognition, and AI-operated weapons—technologies that are exported and repurposed around the world.
We set off from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron—one of the areas that the occupying Jewish settlers have claimed as their own. Israel has been moving quickly to occupy more and more land, separating Palestinian territories from each other.
