EU Moves to Share Data With Israel That ‘Could Be Used to Kill Palestinians’

The EU is pushing ahead with a controversial data-sharing agreement with Israel despite warnings that it could enable the targeting and killing of Palestinians, an investigation by the NGO Statewatch has found. 

Under the plans, the bloc’s law enforcement agency, Europol, would exchange sensitive personal information about Palestinians with Israel’s police force, which is headquartered in the illegally occupied West Bank. 

There is also concern the deal could harm members of the  Palestinian diaspora, with a risk that activists in Europe could be targeted.

The data would include names, identification numbers, locations, genetic and biometric information and details about people’s political views, beliefs and personal lives.

Since 2005, the EU has run a mission in the West Bank to support the Palestinian Authority with policing. Rights activists have previously warned that the data sharing deal could turn members of this civilian mission into “informants” for Israel.

In a recently leaked 2022 document obtained by Statewatch, the EU Council’s legal advisors warned that allowing data to be used in the occupied Palestinian territories risked legitimising Israel’s occupation, in breach of international law. 

But negotiations have continued despite this advice. The bloc’s executive branch, the European Commission, held meetings on the deal with Israeli officials between 2023 and 2026, throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Earlier talks took place between 2018 and 2022 without the knowledge and oversight of an EU Council working party assigned to monitor the negotiations. This led MEPs to accuse the Commission of negotiating the agreement in secrecy and failing to properly address the human rights risks.

Data transferred through the agreement “might be used as intelligence in support of decisions to target and kill Palestinians,” said Eitan Diamond, manager and senior legal expert at the International Humanitarian Law Centre.  

“The EU would risk having a hand in arbitrarily depriving people of their liberty and subjecting them to systematic ill-treatment under hellish conditions of detention,” he added.

Giacomo Zandonini, who investigated the deal, told Novara Media the greater threat to Palestinians was around “criminalisation, restrictions to movements and feeding intelligence to Israeli agencies, rather than to military actions. Even though of course Shin Bet information could result in targeted assassinations.”

Raji Sourani, a Palestinian lawyer who was detained by Israel in the 1980s and fled Gaza in 2024, told Statewatch: “The cooperation envisaged by this agreement is rooted in Europe’s racist colonial mentality and goes against us, against the victims of genocide… It’s like trusting Hitler with the data of Jews.”

Sourani is the founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which was sanctioned by the US in 2025 over its involvement in cases brought against Israel before the International Criminal Court.

The European Commission said any agreement would “contain safeguards protecting fundamental rights, including data protection safeguards, such as restrictions on the use of data in connection with the death penalty”.