Communications blackouts have also stymied aid organizations and emergency workers trying to coordinate with the local population and with each other. And for Gaza’s journalists, the blackouts are an impediment as they try to inform the world about suffering in the enclave.
How frequent are the communication outages?
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, Gaza has suffered nine communications blackouts, according to the cybersecurity monitoring group NetBlocks. They have ranged in duration from nine hours to 72 hours. Communications have been out again since Friday.
What’s causing the outages?
Israeli bombing has damaged cellphone networks, according to Mamoon Fares, director of corporate support for the Palestinian Telecommunications Co., or Paltel, one of two providers in the enclave. Most of the internal fiber connections that link to switches and street cabinets “are damaged and need to be fixed,” he said.
Cellphone towers had also been damaged. “We have more than 550 towers inside Gaza,” said Fares, who is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Most of them were partially or completely damaged.”
Compounding the problem, he told The Washington Post, is the displacement of more than 1.8 million people inside the enclave. The migration from north and central Gaza to the south has overwhelmed network capacity there.
“If traffic increased by 15 to 20 percent, it’s okay,” he said. But with so many people heading south, “suddenly our network lost more than 50 to 60 percent of its capacity due to damage, and the 1 million people [in the south] became 2 million people.”
During the humanitarian pause in November, Paltel made repairs and restored some service. “Since then,” Fares said, “things have gone from bad to worse.”
Most repairs, he said, are carried out “under fire.” The company has coordinated repairs with Israel, but employees have worked with “fighting around. There is shooting around them. There are tanks that harass them from time to time.”
Two Paltel employees were killed last week, according to chief executive Abdel Majeed Melhem, who said the workers were “targeted” by Israel. The company said 13 of its employees have been killed since the beginning of the conflict.
Fares said Paltel isn’t making a profit in Gaza. The company is offering free minutes to ensure people can stay connected and contact humanitarian services as it pays to repair the damage. “We just want to make sure that our network continues to operate so that people can make all these lifesaving calls,” he said. “This is the situation under the war.”
In November, Palestinian providers said fuel shortages had left them unable to continue service. Ishaq Sidr, the head of the Palestinian Communications Ministry, said Paltel needed 14,500 liters of fuel per day, in addition to storage fuel, “to avoid this disaster again.”
What was the state of Gaza’s cellphone network before Oct. 7?
Gaza is served by two main cellphone providers. Jawwal, which is owned by Paltel, introduced mobile communications to the Palestinian territories in 1997. Ooredoo, a Qatari company, entered the market in 2017.
While Israel has fifth-generation cellphone service, or 5G, the Palestinian territories rely on older technology. The maximum service available in the West Bank is 3G; in Gaza, it’s 2G.
Under the Oslo accords — the 1993 and 1995 agreements that outlined a process for peace between Israelis and Palestinians — and a separate set of economic protocols, Israel has control over the cellular communications and technology Palestinians may build, said Helga Tawil-Souri, a professor of media and communication at New York University.
“Telecom and infrastructure are inseparable from the larger political context,” she said. “There are pages about what the Palestinian Authority is allowed to broadcast, the signal strengths. You’re allowed to put these towers in certain areas. You’re allowed to build towers this high. You can’t interfere with these kinds of signals. If you want to build something new, you have to work through the Israelis.”
That’s how Israel was able to cut off communication in Gaza at the start of the war, she said.
“There is no cable that connects Gaza to anything outside of Gaza except for the ones that go through Israel proper,” she said. “So it is ultimately the Israeli Ministry of Communications that has control over these fiber optic cables that can stop the flow of communication on those cables.”
In November, a senior U.S. official told The Post that communications in Gaza were restored after the United States “made it clear that they had to be turned back on.”
Another limiting factor, Tawil-Souri said, is the amount of spectrum — radio frequency — the cellphone companies are allocated. “The only body that awards spectrum allocation across Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem is the Israeli Ministry of Communications,” she said, and it’s been increased only once since the 1990s, to allow Ooredoo to operate in the Palestinian territories.
During a 2022 visit, President Biden offered to upgrade cell coverage in Gaza and the West Bank to 4G, but Fares said the initiative stalled.
How do Gazans get around the outages?
Some people have access to satellite phones, which bypass cellular infrastructure to connect directly to satellites. It’s how Al Jazeera, for example, has been able to continue covering the war during blackouts. But the technology — expensive to buy, maintain and use — is out of reach for most people.
Some Gazans have used SIM cards from Israeli operators. Before the war, these could be bought secretly from regular cellphone stores. Israeli operators have better coverage and better technology than Palestinian providers; SIM cards connect to strong Israeli towers just outside Gaza.
The digital version of a SIM card, called eSims, is another workaround. “If you have an eSIM and can get close enough to the buffer zone or the Egyptian border, you can pick up signal strength from those towers if you have a phone that has a roaming agreement with other companies.” Souri-Tawil said.
Many eSims come from donors. Unlike physical SIM cards, eSims can be set up remotely. Egyptian journalist Mirna El Helbawi has been leading a drive to gather eSIM donations for Gaza. A donor may buy an eSIM in their home country and send a photo of the QR code to El Helbawi. She has said on X that the drive has yielded 100,000 eSims for Gazans.
What’s causing the current blackout?
The blackout that began Friday was caused by damage to underground cables, Fares said. It’s the longest of the war.
Repair crews have not been able to reach the cables, Fares said, because they have not yet received permission from Israel.
“We are coordinating with the Israeli side regarding allowing our working crews to access and repair the affected areas in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross” and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, he said.
What has the United States said?
Biden administration officials have stressed a need for working communications in Gaza.
“Maintaining telecommunications and ensuring they are up and running and operational is important for aid workers, civilians and journalists to communicate with each other and with the world,” a National Security Council spokesman said. “The absence of telecommunications deprives people from accessing lifesaving information, while also undermining first responders and other humanitarian actors’ ability to operate and to do so safely.”
Of the current outage, a U.S. official said: “We have been in touch with the government of Israel over this blackout and have urged them to turn telecoms back on.”
Ledur reported from Philadelphia. Hajar Harb in London and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
