What life is like for Palestinians

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due to all the checkpoints plus assorted bureaucratic nonsense, the Palestinian he was talking to had to allow four and a half hours just to travel seven miles, whereas he himself would be able to travel that distance in minutes.

It takes a few seconds: Palestinians place electronic ID cards on a sensor, stare at the aperture of a small black camera, then walk past panels fanning open to let them through.

Israel is upgrading its West Bank checkpoints with facial recognition technology to verify Palestinians' identities as they cross into Israel. The new system, which began rolling out late last year, eases their passage with shorter wait times — but is drawing criticism about the role the controversial technology plays in Israel's military control over Palestinians.

"Israel knows all the information about you," said Palestinian university student Rina Khoury, as she walked through a checkpoint near Jerusalem this month.

Some U.S. cities have banned the use of facial recognition technology over concerns that law enforcement could track the public — and human biases that creep into the technology could lead to misidentification of suspects. But it's being adopted increasingly by police and airports in the U.S. and around the world — most notably in China, where experts say it is used to track and target its Muslim Uighur minority.

Within an estimated few months, face recognition software will be installed at all West Bank crossings serving Palestinians, Israeli defense officials told NPR. Such screening is not used at separate West Bank checkpoints that Israelis drive through.

The military checkpoints are part of a larger system regulating the entry of Palestinians into Israeli areas and even some predominantly Palestinian areas like East Jerusalem. Palestinians need special military permits to pass.

Israel says checkpoints are needed to protect Israelis from potential attackers, following a period of suicide bombings in the early 2000s, while Palestinians consider them a degrading infringement on their freedom of movement and a symbol of Israel's control over their lives.

The facial recognition software used to identify Palestinians at checkpoints was developed by the Israeli tech company AnyVision, a company spokesman confirmed to NPR. TheMarker, an Israeli business newspaper, first identified the company's involvement last month.

Microsoft Corp on Friday said it would sell its stake in AnyVision, an Israeli facial recognition startup, and said it no longer would make minority investments in companies that sell the controversial technology.

The decision marks a policy change for the Redmond, Washington-based software maker, which has aimed to shape how the technology industry approaches facial recognition. Microsoft has laid out principles to guide its own development of the technology, saying it should perform without bias and must not impinge on democratic freedoms.

Civil liberties groups have said police use of facial recognition could lead to unfair, arbitrary arrests and limit freedom of expression.

Microsoft came under scrutiny last summer for participating in a $74 million funding round for AnyVision, which critics said contradicted the company's principles.

AnyVision, based outside Tel Aviv, came under scrutiny following media reports that its technology was used to surveil Palestinians who lived in the occupied West Bank. Microsoft later hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and a team from Covington & Burling to investigate the claims.

The law firm found that AnyVision's technology was in use at checkpoints in border crossings between Israel and the West Bank - as the startup had said - but that it had not fueled a mass surveillance program there, according to a copy of the audit's findings posted on the website of M12, Microsoft's venture fund.

Even so, Microsoft said that as a result of the probe it decided to exit the business of investing in facial recognition startups altogether.

"For Microsoft, the audit process reinforced the challenges of being a minority investor in a company that sells sensitive technology, since such investments do not generally allow for the level of oversight or control that Microsoft exercises over the use of its own technology," Microsoft and AnyVision said in a joint statement posted on M12's website.

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While Microsoft has turned down some facial recognition sales on human rights grounds, such as declining a deal for the capital city of a country that nonprofit Freedom House said was not free, it continues to develop the software for other commercial and public sector uses.

Microsoft said there was no change to its internal work on facial recognition.

Facial recognition software has emerged as one of the most controversial facets of the AI-powered surveillance era. In the past few years we’ve seen cities issue expansive bans on the technology, while politicians have fought to regulate how police utilize it. And companies such as Clearview AI, meanwhile, have been hit with lawsuits and fines around the world for major data privacy breaches around facial recognition technology.

Oct 27, 2023

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Palestinian refugees are a crucial part of Lebanon’s population, even though they have almost no rights in the country.
In this video, I visited two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon: Sabra and Shatila. You'll learn about daily life of the local people, why they are prohibited not only from building but also repairing their homes, why these refugee camps don't look like typical camps, and why they have real multi-story concrete buildings instead of tents. Also, you’ll learn about their work and study, and why they dream of returning to Palestine, even though that they've never been there, and why they can't do so.

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Also the whole thing with Iranians protesting the hijab requirment for women, that was a big deal for a minute than everyone forgot about it...while there are still probably citizens being killed over that. But apparently Iran is a big ally for something so the U.S just has to pretend its fine if they kill tons of their citizens over not wanting to force people to wear a silly head scarf. Like idk if I get hate for it, it's not right for Israel to kill so many civilians, just like it isnt right for Iran to kill a bunch of civilians becasuse woman are sick of wearing head scarfs and full body coverings in the desert where it is hot out, where guys get to actually dress for the weather.

That's a bit of an extreme statement.

Palestinian refugees stuck in Lebanon for 70 years.




The video doesn't actually explain "why" they are prohibited from repairing their homes.

Be that as it may, Palestinian refugees have basically no rights in Lebanon.

No wonder Hezbollah is popular there.

I don't know about that. Greta Thunberg was called anti-semite and was compaired to Hitler in a large internet campaign after she expressed support of the civilians in Gaza. Even members of the Israeli goverment took part in this campaign if I remember correctly.

It is an unfortunate humanitarian case indeed but many factions in Lebanon are against giving Palestinians “equal rights” (citizenship).
One of the reasons is the PLO’s bad history in Lebanon.

In my opinion tho, giving them citizenship would have lifted us the burden of “restoring Palestine” for these people; I know plenty of Palestinians who live and work among Lebanese and no local wouldn’t be able to guess it without being revealed, those who live outside the “camps” acquired the same local dialect. In other term, they can blend in just fine, and perhaps that would lessen any room of radicalization.

Hezbollah is popular among who?

Among the Palestinians?
Hezbollah is among the most extreme opponents to any law giving citizenship or higher rights to the Palestinians; along with the Christians, due to sectarian and demographic reasons. Also the Hezbollah claim that this would kill the cause in their hearts.

Even if there are good reasons not to grant them full citizenship, why restrict their ability to work, or to repair their homes? Depriving them of basic human rights like this is just yet another way to radicalize them, it seems to me.


Even giving them basic rights without full voting citizenship would help in this regard, I would think.


Among the many folks who have joined it. Isn't Hezbollah quite big? Isn't that part of what makes them a problem?


Are you saying that the members/supporters of Hezbollah consist almost entirely of Lebanese Shi'ites and do NOT include many if any Palestinians? I had assumed they included both.

Even if there are good reasons not to grant them full citizenship, why restrict their ability to work, or to repair their homes? Depriving them of basic human rights like this is just yet another way to radicalize them, it seems to me.

It is an unfortunate humanitarian case indeed but many factions in Lebanon are against giving Palestinians “equal rights” (citizenship).
One of the reasons is the PLO’s bad history in Lebanon.
In my opinion tho, giving them citizenship would have lifted us the burden of “restoring Palestine” for these people; I know plenty of Palestinians who live and work among Lebanese and no local wouldn’t be able to guess it without being revealed, those who live outside the “camps” acquired the same local dialect. In other term, they can blend in just fine, and perhaps that would lessen any room of radicalization.

Hezbollah is popular among who? Among the Palestinians?
Hezbollah is among the most extreme opponents to any law giving citizenship or higher rights to the Palestinians; along with the Christians, due to sectarian and demographic reasons. Also the Hezbollah claim that this would kill the cause in their hearts.

Who else are they gonna use as pawns for the proclaimed war of liberation?

This is something I don't get. I would of thought that if you don't want to give equal rights and give citizenship to a group of people who came as refugees more than 70 years ago as well of their descendants who never lived in the place they came from, then you are not fighting for "their cause". Why do some people in the Middle East think that a specific piece of land is more important than the rights of individuals to have a country to live in?

The point of having a refugee status in the first place is supposed to a temporary measure until they can be resettled if they are unable to back to the place they came from. There should not be case where people remain refugees for 70 years and even less so for children to inherit refugee status from their parents.

Nope, Hezbollah's core military body includes purely Shi'ites, Hezbollah is an ally of Hamas and other radical Palestinian factions tho. Supporters may include other sects.

Palestinian-phobia is a very real problem here, there's total lack of trust and constant fear of them rising to power again (The PLO literally ruled many the Muslim areas of Lebanon back then).

Jordan did handle them way better despite the bloody history with the PLO, yet we don't hear many Palestinian-Jordanians anymore wanting to go back to Palestine, but Jordan doesn't have the demographic diversity as much as we have. Yet, many Palestinans left the camps, I know some who work as pharmacists, engineers and in other crafts; actually their out-of-the-camp community tends to be highly educated.

Tho most of those are Fatah moderate Palestinans, their women are nottably often not veiled even (and those who are, it's just the hair, there's no burqas among them) their women are equally educated, observing women's status and dress gives often a very strong indication of knowing how radical/moderate a Muslim community is. It's the total opposite in the camp's Palestinians, where Islamist movements are festering like Hamas and Jund el Sham, which makes Christians even more phobic from them.

The Armenian community in Burj Hammoud camp (which turned to a whole city slums quarter) did prosper and integrated well into society, their enmity toward Turkey didn't cross the lines in a way that harmed Lebanon-Turkey relations, and unlike the Palestinians, they remained neutral during the civil war; therefore they are not seen of having blood on their hands.

Very few of them did go to Armenia for servitude in their recent war against Azerbaijan tho; but they were extremely few ultra-nationals, probably due to the fact that Armenians have full citizenship and equal rights to other Lebanese, which makes me believe the Palestinans could be the same now under the same circumstances.