Data instead of people - How Palantir, the military and investors are remapping Gaza’s future

In southern Israel, in Kiryat Gat, Palantir maintains a fixed desk inside the Civil Military Coordination Center, the coordination hub established by U.S. Central Command that is tasked, following the ceasefire that took effect in October, with overseeing implementation and managing aid deliveries to Gaza. While drone images stream across large monitors, convoys, distribution points and routes are entered into software originally designed to evaluate battlefields in real time. According to several diplomatic sources, Palantir provides the technical architecture for this system. A company representative sits in the operations room and integrates delivery data directly into the firm’s platforms. It has not been publicly confirmed which specific products are being used, but visual material shows the deployment of the application Gaia, advertised as a tool to “make the battlefield visible.”

Palantir, founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel with support from the CIA’s investment arm In-Q-Tel, has for years worked closely with U.S. agencies, the military and ICE. In early 2024, the company entered into a strategic partnership with the Israeli military for war related missions. Board meetings were held in Tel Aviv “in solidarity.” A year earlier, Palantir had introduced its Artificial Intelligence Platform, intended to help militaries identify targets more quickly. A manager described the technology as a way to “optimize the kill chain.” In a UN reporting template from June 2025, it was stated that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Palantir had provided automated predictive policing, core military infrastructure and AI supported decision platforms.

See also our investigation:

The Shadow Files - Palantir, the Invisible State Within the State

(Our article from August 28, 2025)

Under the title “The Architecture of Control: How Peter Thiel’s Data Power and the Political Network Rockbridge Undermine Democracy” - https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-architektur-der-kontrolle-wie-peter-thiels-datenmacht-und-das-politische-netzwerk-rockbridge-die-demokratie-untergraben/

It began with a click. A digital lock that opened - against the will of a judge, against every rule of security. On March 20, 2025, federal judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court in Maryland had issued an unmistakable order: the dubious special unit DOGE was not to have any access to the systems of the Social Security Administration SSA. It was a legal barrier intended to protect the most sensitive data of more than 300 million Americans - names, birth dates, social security numbers, life histories. But less than 24 hours later, that barrier was broken. Secretly, in the night, administrators were instructed to lift the blocks. An act that not only mocked the authority of a federal judge, but marked the beginning of one of the greatest data scandals in the history of the United States.

Read more here …

Inside the coordination center, humanitarian data now merge with military logic. According to company information, Palantir’s systems Gotham and Foundry are designed to synchronize data, logic and AI modules. A function called Type Mapping makes it possible to render information from civilian supply chain systems immediately usable for military analysis. Theoretically, this means that data on relief goods, distribution sites and transport routes could be processed within the same infrastructure intended for target selection and airstrikes. A diplomat participating in the meetings put it starkly: the boundary between drone death and aid delivery disappears at the same table.

At the same time, the structure of aid itself is changing. Beginning in March 2026, Israel prohibits numerous organizations from operating in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including Doctors Without Borders, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians. New registration rules require detailed personnel data and disclosure of internal procedures. The organizations warn of security risks for local staff. Other groups, such as Samaritan’s Purse or GAiN, remain authorized and appear alongside private companies at the CMCC. Observers report prayer circles inside the operations area, while military contractors such as Safe Reach Solutions expand their presence. The company had already provided security personnel for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, under whose operations more than 2,600 people were killed and over 19,000 injured during aid distributions. The former GHF headquarters is now the seat of the CMCC.

Arkel International, which recruited drivers from Serbia and Georgia, has also resurfaced. Terra Firma Capital Partners, founded by Guy Hands, now likewise holds a fixed position within the center. At the Board of Peace meeting in Washington, the reconstruction of Gaza was presented as an economic opportunity. Yakir Gabay spoke of a Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and artificial islands. Marc Rowan of Apollo Global Management described it as bundling productive assets into a unified structure. Meanwhile, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek economist and politician who became internationally known in 2015 as finance minister during the debt crisis, recounts a conversation with a Palantir representative who stated in essence that the more intense the bombardment, the more valuable the training data for AI models. For Varoufakis, this marks a new stage: not only weapons but suffering itself becomes a source of capital.

One can only warn that a profit driven parallel system closely linked to military structures undermines international humanitarian law. Aid is dismantled and transformed into an instrument that combines control, data collection and economic interests. While the regions continue to struggle for peace, investors, military officials and technology corporations sit at one table planning infrastructure that goes far beyond mere supply. Gaza thus becomes a workshop in which digital surveillance, private security architecture and geopolitical power are being reordered. The decision over who will distribute aid in the future and who will be excluded is not made in an open debate but in operations rooms filled with screens and data streams.