KUWAIT: Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday voiced extreme concern over the plans of occupation forces to attack Rafah City in the Gaza Strip following the forced displacement of its civilian population. In a press statement, the ministry restated Kuwait’s rejection of aggressive practices and displacement plans against the Palestinian people. It also echoed the country’s call for the international community and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to live up to their responsibilities by protecting Palestinian civilians and put international accountability mechanisms in place in order to stop continued violations of international law.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that Zionist entity’s planned army operation in overcrowded Rafah would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for the United Nations Security Council to intervene. The kingdom “warned of the extremely dangerous repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and affirmed its “categorical rejection and strong condemnation of their forced deportation”, in a foreign ministry statement carried by state media.

“This continued violation of international law and international humanitarian law confirms the necessity of convening the Security Council urgently to prevent Zionists from causing an imminent humanitarian catastrophe,” the statement added. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ordered the army to prepare to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of a planned ground operation against Hamas in the city.

More than one million displaced Palestinians have taken refuge in the city in Gaza’s far south, many sheltering in tents pushed up against the border with Egypt and the sea. Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam, has never recognized Zionist entity but had been considering to do so before the war broke out in October.

Vowing to eliminate Hamas, Zionists launched a massive military offensive in Gaza that the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 27,947 people, mostly women and children. Riyadh has repeatedly called for a ceasefire while criticizing “aggression” in Gaza. While US President Joe Biden’s administration has voiced optimism that Saudi-Zionist normalization can be revived, Saudi Arabia said this week it had told Washington it would not establish ties with Zionist entity until an independent Palestinian state is “recognized” and Zionist forces leave Gaza.

In another development, Zionist army has deployed some AI-enabled military technology in combat for the first time in Gaza, raising fears about the use of autonomous weapons in modern warfare. The army has hinted at what the new tech is being used for, with spokesman Daniel Hagari saying last month that Zionist forces were operating “above and underground simultaneously”. A senior defense official told AFP the tech was destroying enemy drones and mapping Hamas’s vast tunnel network in Gaza.

New defense technologies including artificial intelligence-powered gunsights and robotic drones form a bright spot in an otherwise dire period for Zionist tech industry. The sector accounted for 18 percent of GDP in 2022, but the war in Gaza has wreaked havoc with an estimated eight percent of its workforce called up to fight. “In general the war in Gaza presents threats, but also opportunities to test emerging technologies in the field,” said Avi Hasson, chief executive of Startup Nation Central, a tech incubator. “Both on the battlefield and in the hospitals there are technologies that have been used in this war that have not been used in the past.”

But the rising civilian death toll shows that much greater oversight is needed over the use of new forms of defense tech, Mary Wareham, an arms expert at Human Rights Watch, told AFP. “Now we’re facing the worst possible situation of death and suffering that we’re seeing today - some of that is being brought about by the new tech,” she said. More than 150 countries in December backed a UN resolution identifying “serious challenges and concerns” in new military tech, including “artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems.”

Zionist military has killed nearly 28,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry. Like many other modern conflicts, the war has been shaped by a proliferation of inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, which have made attacks from the air easier and cheaper.

In a first, the army has used an AI-enabled optic sight, made by Zionist startup Smart Shooter, which is attached to weapons such as rifles and machine guns. “It helps our soldiers to intercept drones because Hamas uses a lot of drones,” said the senior defense official. “It makes every regular soldier - even a blind soldier - a sniper.” Another system to neutralize drones involves deploying a friendly drone with a net that it can throw around the enemy craft to neutralize it. “It’s drone versus drone - we call it Angry Birds,” the official said.

A pillar of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to “destroy” Hamas is quickly mapping the underground tunnel network where Zionist entity says the group’s fighters are hiding and holding hostages. The network is so vast that the army has dubbed it the “Gaza Metro” and a recent study by US military academy West Point said there were 1,300 tunnels stretching over 500 kilometers.

To map the tunnels the army has turned to drones that use AI to learn to detect humans and can operate underground, including one made by Zionist startup Robotican that encases a drone inside a robotic case. It is being used in Gaza “to enter into tunnels and to see as far as the communication lets you,” the senior defense official said. Before the war the technology did not allow drones to operate underground because of issues sending images to the surface, the official added.

The conflict has raised human rights concerns but also cemented Zionist status as a world-leading manufacturer of cutting-edge defense systems. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the United States – Zionist entity’s main international ally and provider of billions of dollars each year in military aid - was training its own soldiers to shoot down drones using Smart Shooter’s optic sights. In late January, three US soldiers were killed in a drone attack on a base in Jordan.- Agencies