It has been more than five months since the United States sanctioned the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, and stories about the use and abuse of its Pegasus product continue to break. As various organisations try to push for further measures against Israel for supplying human rights abusers with this tool to further their violations, it is important to remember that Israeli military and surveillance technology is first developed for and tested on Palestinians, before being exported. Unsurprisingly, Pegasus has already been found on the phones of six Palestinian human rights activists, one of whom is now suing NSO in France. Another target happened to be my friend and colleague whose field of work is directly connected to the relationship between Palestine and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The thought that the Israelis have had full access to our personal conversations and exchanges in group chats has been quite disturbing, to say the least. However, this is not the first time Israel has violated my privacy and it won't be the last.

The killing of four Palestinian children aged 10 and 11 by an Israeli air strike on a Gaza beach during the 2014 war could have been prevented, internal documents seen by US website The Intercept show. The boys were killed by an armed Israeli drone that fired two missiles, with the second one hitting and killing four and injuring several others. On July 16, 2014, four children were playing near a shipping container on a jetty that had been destroyed by an Israeli air strike a day earlier because the Israeli military suspected it of being used as a weapons cache by armed members of Hamas. However, experts, journalists and eyewitnesses have all contested the claim weapons were stored in the container, as no members of Hamas were seen in the vicinity and there was no second explosion following the air strike that destroyed it. On the day of the attack, one of the children entered the remains of the container, and was spotted by two Israeli drones, one of which was armed.