Does Motorola support Israel?

Motorola was the first American company to set up operations in Israel (1948, its first branch outside the US) and in 1964 established there its first R&D center outside North America. Motorola Solutions Israel still runs an R&D center of several hundred employees at Airport City near Tel Aviv, developing public-safety products such as the LEX line for first responders, and counts the Israeli army, police, fire departments, municipalities and emergency medical services among its customers.

Motorola developed and supplied 'Mountain Rose' (Vered Harim), the IDF's dedicated encrypted military cellular network, which became operational in mid-2004 and served the Israeli army for more than a decade until replaced by Motorola's own follow-on system.

Israel's Ministry of Defense signed a $100 million agreement, spanning more than 15 years including maintenance, with subsidiary Motorola Solutions Israel to develop, produce and maintain encrypted military smartphones for the IDF, replacing the Motorola-built Mountain Rose network; adaptation, development and production costs were funded partly through US military aid.

Motorola Solutions opened an innovation center in Tel Aviv — its only such center outside the United States — headed by the former head of the cyber administration in Israel's Prime Minister's Office, to work on AI, cybersecurity and public-safety technologies and to scout Israeli startups. CEO Greg Brown said the company would 'invest in start-up companies here in Israel, emerging nascent technologies.'

The UN Human Rights Office's database of businesses involved in Israeli settlement activity has listed Motorola Solutions, Inc. (recorded against the United States) and, separately, its subsidiary Motorola Solutions Israel Ltd. (recorded against Israel) since the database's first publication in February 2020. In the September 2025 update (report A/HRC/60/19), both entities appear in Annex I — the current list, as opposed to Annex II which holds companies removed after review — as entries 113 and 114, tagged against listed activities (d) 'the supply of security services, equipment and materials to enterprises operating in settlements' and (e) 'the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, including transport.' That is a more precise description than the 'surveillance and identification equipment' framing used in some press summaries of the database.

Motorola Solutions Israel has been the sole supplier of the Israel Police's national 'Nitzan' digital communications network since 2008, per Israeli press, including system infrastructure, hardware/software upgrades and ongoing maintenance. As a shared 'national radio' framework, other emergency-services bodies connect to Nitzan through Motorola too: Israel's government e-procurement portal lists a sole-source contract with the Ministry of National Security's Fire and Rescue Authority to purchase and maintain Nitzan-linked equipment worth NIS 3,517,000 (roughly US$970,000) for August 2024–May 2025, and an earlier sole-source Nitzan/Baraq Katom installation contract from January 2018 procured via the Ministry of Energy. Separately, Calcalist reported in August 2023 that Israel Police asked the Finance Ministry to approve, without competitive tender, an approximately NIS 20 million (roughly US$5.5 million) expansion of the Motorola contract for replacement handsets — a request the Finance Ministry and rival vendors opposed, warning it would set a precedent ahead of a planned nationwide network-upgrade tender reported at hundreds of millions of shekels. Who Profits separately lists further sole-source Nitzan contracts worth NIS 31.3 million (2021), NIS 24 million (2022) and NIS 56 million (2025–2026), which this pass could not independently verify.

Who Profits, an Israeli advocacy research centre, documents — citing a June 2024 freedom-of-information request to Israel's Ministry of Defense and Israeli government tender records — that Motorola Solutions Israel has supplied the Ministry of Defense's 'MotoEagle' wide-area radar-and-camera surveillance system to West Bank settlements and outposts since 2005, in a project it values at NIS 400 million (roughly US$110 million). Who Profits and other advocacy sources put at least 25 settlements/outposts equipped by 2016, including Hebron, Karmei Tzur, Bracha, Tekoa, Otniel, Beit Hagai, Eli, Rehelim, Kfar Tapuach, Elon Moreh, Talmon and Shilo, and state that some radar posts were built on privately owned Palestinian land. The same Who Profits profile also lists Motorola Solutions Israel security/communications contracts with West Bank settlement and regional-council bodies — Population and Immigration Authority offices in the settlements of Ariel, Beitar Illit and Sha'ar Binyamin, the Jordan Valley and Mateh Binyamin regional councils, and the Civil Administration office in Beit El — again sourced by Who Profits to Israeli tender records this pass could not access directly. Independent search located Motorola Solutions Israel's development of an earlier, separate radar-based perimeter-detection fence around 2003 (reported by Haaretz/TheMarker for border and Gaza-perimeter use) but no independent corroboration of the settlement-deployment figures or the NIS 400 million project value, so this claim remains single-sourced to Who Profits.