2023-12-05 12:00:08
After an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip, December 4, 2023. JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP
The war aims of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip are reaffirmed every day by the authorities: “ The elimination of Hamas and the return of hostages to Israel”, as was again assured, Monday December 4, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. But, while the truce between Israel and Hamas ended on December 1 and the army is now intensifying its strikes and its deployment in the south of the enclave, a series of investigations published in the Israeli and British press since on November 30, reporting a computer platform equipped with artificial intelligence which the Israeli army would use to pilot its bombing campaigns and carry out its stated objectives, raises important questions.
Although the Israeli army claims the use of this technology, the controversy is growing in the face of the extension of its offensive to the entire Palestinian territory and the number of victims – nearly 16,000 according to the Ministry of Defense. health administered by Hamas.
According to Guardian and the left-wing Israeli magazine +972, who published these articles based on interviews with serving Israeli officers and former soldiers who disagreed with the strategy followed, the main platform used today by the army is called “Habsora” (“Habsora” (“Habsora”). gospel music “). On a page of its website, put online on November 2, the Israeli army presents this software – without naming it – as a system which “allows automatic tools to be used to produce targets at a rapid rate (…) by improving intelligence (…) with the help of artificial intelligence. The page is enhanced with an emphatic title: “A target factory” Who “operates twenty-four hours a day”.
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These statements directly echo the number of strikes and targets on which the Israeli army communicates every day since the start of the war. On December 3, the military authorities indicated that they had carried out “around 10,000 airstrikes” on Gaza since October 7. A figure considered colossal by many specialists. The Israeli army also claims to have attacked “ 15,000 targets » during the first thirty-five days of the conflict, compared to 5,000 to 6,000 during the fifty-one days of Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Known since 2021
With Habsora, the army seems to have increased 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), with reference to the latency time between the identification of an objective and the decision to fire. For the “Iron Dome”, for example, the system which protects Israeli territory from aerial threats, “the time left to the operators, often young people doing their military service, is around one minute”, explains Ms. de Roucy-Rochegonde, author of a thesis defended on November 20 on the regulation of autonomous weapon systems, entitled “The Woes and Woes of Force Control.”
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