The Israeli army’s war aims in the Gaza Strip are reiterated by the authorities on a daily basis: “The elimination of Hamas and the return of the hostages to Israel,” as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reassured on Monday, December 4th. But while the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended on December 1 and the army is now intensifying its attacks and operations in the south of the enclave, a series of investigations have been published in the Israeli and British press since November 30, a computer reports The artificial intelligence-enabled platform that the Israeli army would use to direct its bombing campaigns and achieve its stated goals raises important questions.
Although the Israeli army claims to use this technology, the controversy is growing given the expansion of its offensive across the entire Palestinian territory and the number of casualties – almost 16,000, according to the Defense Ministry. Health managed by Hamas.
According to the Guardian and the left-wing Israeli magazine +972, which published these articles based on interviews with current and former Israeli officers who disagree with the strategy being pursued, the platform now primarily used by the army is called “Habsora” (“ the Gospel”). On a page of its website posted online on November 2, the Israeli army presents this software – without naming it – as a system that “enables the use of automatic tools to quickly produce targets ( …) by improving intelligence information (…”). ) with the help of artificial intelligence”. The page is accompanied by an emphatic title: “A target factory” that “operates twenty-four hours a day”.
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These statements directly reflect the number of attacks and targets that the Israeli army has communicated about on a daily basis since the beginning of the war. On December 3, military authorities said they had carried out “around 10,000 airstrikes” on Gaza since October 7. A number considered colossal by many experts. The Israeli army also claims to have attacked “15,000 targets” in the first 35 days of the conflict, compared to 5,000 to 6,000 in the 51 days of Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Known since 2021
With Habsora, the army appears to have multiplied the number of possible targets and “accelerated the targeting cycle as much as possible,” analyzes Laure de Roucy-Rochegonde, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), referring to the period of latency between identifying a target and deciding to shoot. For the Iron Dome, the system that protects Israeli territory from airborne threats, “the time left to the operators, often young people doing their military service, is about a minute,” says Ms. de Roucy- Rochegonde. Author of a dissertation on the regulation of autonomous weapon systems entitled “Haurs and misfortunes of force control”, defended on November 20th.
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