JERUSALEM: Israel plans to use anti-terrorism tracking technology and a partial shutdown of its economy to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.
Cyber tech monitoring would be deployed to locate people who have been in contact with those carrying the virus, subject to cabinet approval, Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.
“We will very soon begin using technology ... digital means that we have been using in order to fight terrorism,” Netanyahu said. He said he had requested Justice Ministry approval because such measures could infringe patients’ privacy.
In an escalation of precautionary measures, Netanyahu’s government announced that malls, hotels, restaurants and theaters will shut down from Sunday, and said employees should not go to their workplaces unless it was necessary.
However vital services, pharmacies, supermarkets and banks would continue to operate.
Health officials urged people to maintain social distancing, and not to gather more than 10 people in a room.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, confirmed that it was examining the use of its technological capabilities to fight coronavirus, at the request of Netanyahu and the Health Ministry.
Avner Pinchuk, a privacy expert with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said such capabilities could include real-time tracking of infected persons’ mobile phones to spot quarantine breaches and backtracking through meta-data to figure out where they had been and who they had contacted.
“I am troubled by this announcement. I understand that we are in unique circumstances, but this seems potentially like over-reach. Much will depend on how intrusive the new measures are,” said Pinchuk.
The Shin Bet, however, said in its statement that quarantine enforcement was not on the table. “There is no intention of using said technologies for enforcement or tracking in the context of isolation guidelines,” it said.
Netanyahu said it was not an easy choice to make and described the virus as an “invisible enemy that must be located.” He said Israel would follow similar methods used by Taiwan.
“In all my years as prime minister I have avoided using these means among the civilian public but there is no choice,” Netanyahu said.
The latest announcement follows a series of ever-stricter restrictions imposed by Israel to contain the virus.
The Israeli military said earlier on Saturday that it had ordered all troops to be back on their bases by Sunday morning, and that combat soldiers should prepare for a lengthy stay with no leave for up to a month.
Last week anyone entering Israel was ordered to self-isolate for two weeks and schools have been shut. Tens of thousands of Israelis are presently quarantined.
Israel’s Health Ministry said 193 people have tested positive, with no fatalities. Many had been on international flights in the past two weeks.
Israel to use anti-terror tech to counter coronavirus ‘invisible enemy’
https://arab.news/8mskq
Israel to use anti-terror tech to counter coronavirus ‘invisible enemy’
- Cyber tech monitoring will be deployed to locate people who have been in contact with those carrying the virus
- In an escalation of precautionary measures, Netanyahu’s government announced that malls, hotels, restaurants and theaters will shut down
Gaza death toll far higher than initially reported: Lancet study
- Israel killed 25,000 more people by start of 2025 than was reported by authorities
- ‘It will be a long time before we get to a full accounting of all the people killed in Gaza, if we ever get there’
LONDON: The war in Gaza saw 25,000 more deaths in its first 16 months than authorities announced at the time, according to the Lancet.
Research published by the medical journal estimated that 75,000 deaths occurred between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 5, 2025, including 42,200 women, children and elderly people.
The authors of the study published on Wednesday said: “The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict.”
Last month, an Israeli security officer told Israeli media that casualty figures published by Gaza’s health authorities were largely accurate, having previously downplayed or questioned their size, adding that around 70,000 people were thought to have been killed in Israeli assaults since Oct. 7, 2023.
Gaza’s health authorities say 71,660 people are confirmed to have died, including 570 since the singing of a ceasefire last October.
The new research suggests that those figures are below the reality. Using trained Palestinians on the ground in the enclave, it surveyed 2,000 Gazan families who were asked to provide details about members killed in the conflict.
One of the report’s authors, Prof. Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London, said the research found that 8,200 people also died in the surveyed period from “indirect” causes such as disease and hunger.
Despite covering the most intense period of the conflict, the study does not analyze anything beyond January 2025. In August, famine was declared in Gaza by UN-backed experts.
In November, a study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research suggested that 78,318 people had been killed in the enclave by Dec. 31, 2024.
Its higher casualty rate was ascribed to a larger number of indirect fatalities, which contributed to life expectancy in Gaza dropping by 44 percent in 2023 and 47 percent in 2024.
“It will be a long time before we get to a full accounting of all the people killed in Gaza, if we ever get there,” said Spagat, who has studied conflict zones for 20 years.
