Telephone and Internet services in Gaza have been completely destroyed

Cell phone and internet services in Gaza have been disrupted following the escalation of Israeli military bombardment and the expansion of ground operations. That leaves more than 2 million Palestinians without a reliable connection to the outside world.

The Palestinian telecommunications company Jwal, which provides mobile phone services in Gaza, announced in a public statement that Israeli airstrikes and artillery had cut off all communication services since October 27. NetBlocksa non-profit organization that tracks Internet disruptions, shared network data showing the collapse of connectivity in the Gaza Strip, which has had a major impact on Paltel, Jval’s parent company and the last major operator left to provide service as connectivity drops in in the midst of ongoing conflicts with Israel.

Confirmed: Live network data shows a drop in connectivity #Gaza Amidst reports of heavy bombardment, a high-impact tape to Paltel. The company remains the last major operator to provide service as Etisalat cuts connections amid ongoing fighting with Israel pic.twitter.com/nDPf7HnjKF

– NetBlocks (@netblocks) October 27, 2023

According to Access Now, a non-profit organization focused on digital civil rights, the communication breakdown follows weeks of internet and phone service blackouts in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes have steadily destroyed the offices and infrastructure of Palestinian telecommunications providers. Cloudflare Radar, a global internet traffic tracking service provided by the US internet company Cloudflare, has shared data tracking the decline.

But the people of Gaza are almost in trouble now Complete loss of communication Palestine Red Crescent SocietyA non-profit humanitarian organization that is part of the International Red Cross has announced that it has lost contact with its operations room and teams in Gaza since Friday, as Israeli authorities cut off all landline, mobile and internet communications. as the same way, New York Times Magazine It said that its reporters have tried to contact the residents of Gaza by phone.

The communications outage comes as more than 2 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children, remain in Gaza without clear escape routes and struggle to access clean water, food and medical supplies. Power outages in Gaza have also disrupted telecommunications operations, with Palestinians resorting to charging their phones with car batteries.

Emerson Brooking at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, an American think tank based in Washington, D.C., said on Oct. 13 that the information blockade in Gaza is making it harder for civilians to survive. Social media post.

Brookings also warned that the loss of video and other communications from Gaza could significantly increase the proportion of misinformation and disinformation in the pro-Palestinian community, obscuring any factual information or news reports that indicate it.

Even before the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians living in Gaza had to make do with older 2G cellular network services, while most of the world has moved to 4G and 5G cellular network services. Israeli authorities have long blocked such advanced cell phone technology and services in Gaza.

Israel’s military strikes on Gaza began after Hamas militants, the military arm of the Hamas organization that controls Gaza, launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel on October 7. Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in Israel and kidnapped hundreds of hostages.

Since Israel began bombing Gaza on October 7, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has killed more than 7,000 Palestinians and wounded several times that number.