Israel’s ground assault hits Gaza’s communication network

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ON OCTOBER 9TH, two days after Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, Israel tightened its blockade of the territory. Internet connectivity in Gaza, which is always lower than in Israel and the rest of the Middle East, tumbled (see chart). On October 27th, as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched a ground assault, it fell further. For nearly two days almost everyone in Gaza lost touch with the outside world and found it much harder to contact each other. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the blackout made it “impossible for ambulances to reach the injured”. Almost 36 hours later, on October 29th, Gazan engineers restored service almost to the level it had been at before the IDF’s most recent attack.

The UN said Israeli air strikes have targeted Gaza’s communications infrastructure. Repairmen can die trying to fix it. Because of Israel’s intensified blockade, Gaza’s only power plant ran out of fuel on October 11th, further reducing internet connectivity as well as damaging other crucial infrastructure such as desalination plants.

Israel has tight control over Gaza’s internet infrastructure. Fibre-optic cables to the strip pass through Israel. It has also banned technology upgrades that would make connections more secure. As a result, mobile-internet providers can offer only 2G connections. They are much slower than the 5G connections to which most Israelis have access.

In some areas of Gaza there is no internet connectivity at all. In others the internet will be usable but slow. In places that used to have several functioning fibre-optic cables and internet-service providers, there is now just one. Text-based messaging may work, depending on the provider or region, but audio and video will be very slow, if they work at all.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has offered the help of Starlink to humanitarian organisations in Gaza. This is a network of satellites that provides off-grid high-bandwidth internet access. But Starlink requires specialised receivers on the ground, which are kept out by Israel’s blockade. And it needs power to operate, which in turn requires fuel.

War tends to damage internet access but also to make it more important. The UN monitors outages because, it fears, they make it easier to hide human-rights violations. The internet transmits life-saving alerts: on October 10th the IDF used Facebook to warn residents of Gaza’s al-Daraj neighbourhood about air strikes. Now, even if the IDF wants to send a message to Gaza, there is less chance people will receive it. ■