A US charity operating schools in Gaza plans to record classroom conversations and use artificial intelligence (AI) to flag speech it considers “hateful” or “inciting”, raising questions about privacy, freedom of expression and who gets to decide what Palestinian children can say.

The proposal comes after nearly three years of war in which Israel’s military has used AI to analyse intercepted communications and help identify potential targets for strikes. Now, a charity says it wants to use the technology to monitor what children and teachers say inside classrooms in the devastated Palestinian territory.

The Gaza Children Village says the system will help teachers follow a curriculum promoting peace and tolerance. Critics, however, fear the initiative could turn classrooms into spaces of surveillance for children already traumatised by war.

The charity’s founder and CEO, Dr David Hasan, a Palestinian American neurosurgeon who teaches at Duke University in North Carolina, said he established the organisation after volunteering at Gaza hospitals during the conflict. He hopes to break the cycle of violence by exposing children to different perspectives.

Its schools, known as Academies of Hope, provide meals, medical services and psychological support. The first opened last summer.

Hasan said the schools follow the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum but have removed material he considers to glorify violence or promote antisemitism. He described classroom monitoring as necessary to ensure the revised curriculum is followed.

Under the proposed system, AI would analyse recorded conversations and alert Hasan to potentially problematic language. Recordings would be stored for 72 hours, he said, while teachers could be contacted for explanations and feedback.

But the plan raises an uncomfortable question: in a territory where children have endured bombardment, displacement and the destruction of much of their educational infrastructure, should AI now be used to scrutinise their words?

A member of the charity’s board, Bishara Bahbah, warned that monitoring must not prevent students and teachers from expressing themselves freely. An aid organisation partnering with the charity has also raised concerns about the proposal’s implications for their cooperation.

Palestinian advocacy groups argue that the initiative risks undermining local control over education. Mohammad AbuAlrob, a Palestinian government spokesperson, said the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum promotes tolerance and justice, warning that classroom surveillance would cross “an important line”.

The stakes are enormous. UNICEF estimates that hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are out of school, while most schools have been damaged or destroyed during the war.

For children whose classrooms have been shattered by conflict, the promise of education should mean a chance to learn, question and speak freely. The prospect of AI monitoring their conversations in the name of peace raises a troubling question: who gets to define hateful speech and what happens when children living through war say things the people monitoring them would rather not hear?