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The Israeli army is preparing to deploy dystopic technological security systems in the occupied West Bank, as its Israeli military and political quarters are concerned it will turn into a major battlefield.

Israeli Army Radio said last week that the army recently began equipping itself with dozens of technological systems to deploy at the entrances to settlements and key points under the pretext of what it called "preventing infiltration".

These systems include watchtowers and mechanisms that will fire live ammunition from a distance without taking into account the safety of the Palestinians in case of technological errors.

The revelation of this move comes in conjunction with the continuation of systematic Israeli army raids on Palestinian cities and towns in the occupied West Bank, in addition to the ceaseless Israeli settler attacks.

This also comes in light of official Israeli statements calling for annexing the occupied West Bank and expanding illegal settlements there, in addition to calls for treating the territory 'like the Gaza Strip'.

Tightening the screws

Anti-settlement activist Bashar Qaryouti told °®ÂþµºÌýthat Israel is working by all means to "tighten the screws" on the West Bank by placing gates at the entrances to Palestinian villages and installing surveillance cameras that operate via lasers, and it also continues to photograph the towns by drones.

The Israeli army is attempting to monitoring all Palestinian movements and finding out any information through technological tools, which has become effective, and the details of the person coming to the checkpoint are known from a distance, which compounds a state of confusion and tension for the occupied territories communities, according to him.

"Installing surveillance devices is not new. Most of the road junctions are planted with cameras that enable the Israeli army to know all the information necessary to monitor us," he added. "This security system, which the Israeli occupation relies on, could lead to a defect in identifying the target and a security measure being taken against someone who is not a target, and this creates a state of terror among the Palestinians."

'To avoid prosecution'

The system, called "Roeh-Yoreh" (see-fire), is an advanced weapons system developed by Rafael Combat Systems, and consists of a tower with advanced surveillance and a lethal firing system remotely controlled from command centres.

Since this system entered the Israeli army's arsenal in 2008, it has been used exclusively in the Gaza Strip, where it was deployed along the security fence east of the Strip, and operated by spotters to target Palestinians who approach the security fence.

According to the Israeli army, the 636th Reconnaissance Unit of the West Bank Division will operate the systems there in the context of Israeli fears of a security escalation in the region, including the possibility of carrying out large-scale armed operations on settlements.

An expert on Israeli affairs, Suleiman Bisharat, told °Õ±·´¡Ìýthat Israel's use of lethal technologies is an expression that the concept of life under the Israeli occupation doesn't stop except when death occurs for everything that is non-Israeli or non-Jewish.

According to his analysis, Israel, as an occupying state, has come to realise that there is a weakness in the human elements of the Israeli army members and their skills, and this is perhaps the result of the fact that there is no longer a real, solid conviction in terms of the ideological dimension of what the Israeli army is doing.

"Therefore, there is a search for tools that support the human component. We saw this during the war on the Gaza Strip, how Israel relied on artificial intelligence programs and technology in many places because it no longer trusts the soldier as a human being, particularly their ability to protect themselves or the country," he said.

Israel suffers from the conflict between the concept of rights, principles and values ​​and the practice on the ground in all the violations it carries out, according to him.

For this reason, it is always looking for lethal tools via technology to protect itself and protect its soldiers from legal prosecutions, which have become one of the basic dilemmas that the Israeli army faces the international courts.

"Israel's focus on creating all technological means based on the principle of killing is a reflection of the mentality that has begun to spread greatly and expand within Israel and which has turned into a state of fascism practised by the Israeli army against the Palestinians who don’t possess any of the simplest tools of self-defence," he concluded.