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Israeli border tech is not about security, it’s a tool for ethnic cleansing

In the West Bank, we are the unwilling test subjects for digital advancements in methods of population control

Israeli border tech is not about security, it’s a tool for ethnic cleansing
Palestinians living in the West Bank are made to go through Israeli checkpoints, where facial recognition technology is used against them | Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images
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I am sitting around a fire outside my home. Above me, a drone circles my house, stopping every few minutes to hover some 15 meters away. Its camera points directly at me, unsubtly filming me in my own yard.

This is not unusual. I am filmed, photographed, tracked and surveilled wherever I go.  

In Hebron, the largest city in the occupied West Bank, where my family has lived for generations, the presence of the Israeli state is everywhere. For the 215,000 or so Palestinians here, there is no such thing as privacy.