Amid air strikes, Gaza’s internet hangs by a thread
In Gaza, 2.3 million people are increasingly struggling to reach the outside world.
Israeli retaliatory airstrikes against Hamas damaged the telecommunications infrastructure in Gaza and the ensuing blockade has strangled the energy supply that powers what's left of the networks.
"In some areas, there is no phone connection at all," Basel Alsourani, a Gaza City-based international advocacy officer for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, told POLITICO between two outages.
"We don't communicate," he said, adding that news was now traveling by word of mouth.
As of Monday, the connectivity in the enclave had dramatically dropped to 58 percent — from an average of 97 percent until the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 — according to the internet-monitoring firm NetBlocks.
Last week, an Israeli bombing campaign targeted network installations and took out two of the three main lines for mobile communications that connect Gaza to the outside, according to the United Nations.
"If the remaining international routes are damaged, this will cause a complete interruption of communication services," warned the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PalTel), the largest telecom operator in Gaza.
The company's headquarters were also wrecked by the airstrikes. "The building was completely destroyed," Alsourani said, adding that out of the building's five or six floors, only two were left.
Most of the other network operators have stopped working effectively, and fixing the damage is proving to be tricky.
"Our crews are working hard to reach and repair the breakdown zone, despite the difficult and dangerous conditions," a Gazan internet provider, Fusion, wrote on Facebook in the aftermath of the Israeli counterattack, before announcing its service was partially restored.
What little access to the internet remains is now threatened by energy shortages, as Gaza's sole power station stopped working after it ran out of fuel and the Israeli government ordered a complete blockade.
Private generators have since taken over, intermittently powering buildings and installations — and allowing the population to charge their phones and computers, but they could soon run out of fuel too — turning the Gaza Strip into a complete black box.