TEL AVIV — Alon Haimovich will step down as general manager of Microsoft Israel following the conclusion of a Microsoft-commissioned inquiry into the subsidiary's dealings with the Israeli military. His departure was announced last week, alongside the exits of several other managers at the Israeli subsidiary, Globes reported.

Microsoft ordered the inquiry last year after a Guardian investigation revealed that Israel's military used Microsoft technology to operate a surveillance system that collected Palestinian civilian phone calls on a mass scale. A joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and the Guardian found that Unit 8200 used Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to store a vast trove of intercepted calls from Gaza and the West Bank.

Within weeks of launching the inquiry, Microsoft concluded that Unit 8200 had violated its terms of service prohibiting the use of its technology to facilitate mass surveillance. The company terminated the unit's access to its cloud services and AI products used to support the surveillance project.

Microsoft vice-chair and president Brad Smith said: "We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians." Microsoft said that senior executives, including chief executive Satya Nadella, were unaware that the unit was using Azure to store intercepted Palestinian communications.

The inquiry, which involved lawyers at Covington & Burling, recently concluded. Senior executives at Microsoft had concerns that some Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent with headquarters about how Unit 8200 was using the company's technology.

Haimovich was summoned by the inquiry team after they visited Microsoft Israel's offices near Tel Aviv. Documents suggest he played a role in developing the relationship between Microsoft Israel and Unit 8200 after a 2021 meeting between Nadella and the unit's then commander. He oversaw a partnership to build a segregated area within Azure to store sensitive intelligence material for Unit 8200. Once that area was complete, the unit moved an expansive archive of routine Palestinian communications into Microsoft's cloud infrastructure. Unit 8200 also built a system on Azure allowing intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyze the content of millions of Palestinian cellular phone calls every day.

In an email to staff announcing his departure, Haimovich said he had positioned Israel as "one of Microsoft's fastest-growing markets worldwide." Globes reported that his departure followed a controversy at Microsoft Israel relating to violations of Microsoft's code of ethics. Microsoft Israel has been placed under the management of Microsoft France.