Israel tests robotic machine gun at West Bank checkpoint

Israel’s military has been accused of recklessly playing with the lives of ordinary Palestinians as it tests a robotic machine gun at a checkpoint in the West Bank.

Fitted with stun grenades and sponge-tipped bullets, the so-called Smash machine gun uses artificial intelligence to track targets and fire at them accurately, according to its manufacturers.

The Israeli military has reportedly said the machine gun has been deployed as part of a pilot scheme in the city of Hebron and has not been fitted with live ammunition.

Hebron, a bitterly divided city in the southern West Bank, is the scene of frequent clashes between Jewish settlers, backed by the Israeli army, and Palestinians. The largest city in the West Bank, it has a Palestinian population of around 200,000 and Jewish one of around 800.

The machine gun has been installed on Shuhada Street, where there are frequent demonstrations by Palestinians against Jewish settlers and the Israeli army. It appears to have been deployed to disperse such gatherings if they become violent.

Smart Shooter, the manufacturer of the weapon, describes it as “an automatic targeting and firing system for small arms”. It can be attached to any rifle and takes only “minutes to master”.

Smash uses “advanced image processing” technology to follow the target and can even predict its movements, according to the Smart Shooter website.

Human rights groups said they were concerned that Israel was increasingly using Palestinians in “experiments” with new military technology and that there was a risk of the gun hitting bystanders.

“The system was placed in the centre of a heavily populated area, with hundreds of people passing by. Any failure of this technology could impact many people,” Issa Amro, a human rights activist in Hebron, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“I see this as part of a transition from human to technological control. We as Palestinians have become an object of experimenting and training for Israel’s military hi-tech industry, which is not accountable for anything it does,” he added.

Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s Military, Security and Policing Programme Director, said: “The Israeli authorities already have a long and bloody record of using excessive force against unarmed Palestinians at checkpoints and during protests in the Occupied Territories, and this looks like a dangerous escalation.

“Whether using conventional rounds or sponge-tipped bullets, this weaponry has the potential to cause serious injury and even death, while the deployment of artificial intelligence runs counter to the basic principles of responsible policing and crowd control.”