“No company can fix or do anything right now,” Mekdad said. Many companies, he says, are waiting until the war is over to look at the status of their infrastructure and evaluate it. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that 65 percent of households and businesses have lost access to the internet and half of networks have been damaged.
According to internet analysts, the Palestinian territories’ largest internet provider, Paltel, has retained the most connectivity. But during the three complete blackouts, even Paltel was knocked offline. “When Paltel is offline, I think everyone is down,” Madory says.
Paltel claims that during the three blackouts his services were ‘disconnected’ by Israel. The Palestinian State’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has also alleged “systematic targeting” of networks and urged countries to “put pressure on the Israeli government” to restore connections. Paltel did not return WIRED’s multiple requests for comment in recent weeks.
The Israeli military declined to comment on whether it was behind the recent internet shutdowns in Gaza. Israel’s Ministry of Communications did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. However, on October 17, prior to the total blackout, Israel’s Ministry of Communications published an update on the war that appeared to detail its plans. “Continuing research and preparation for the shutdown of mobile communications and internet services to Gaza is ongoing,” the update said.
In recent years, internet shutdowns have become a dystopian reality for millions of people in India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and other countries. According to Access Now, a digital rights nonprofit, there were 187 internet outages in 35 countries last year. Shutting down the internet can wreak havoc on a country’s economy, as well as on people’s ability to communicate with friends and loved ones and access medical care and other vital information. Typically, internet shutdowns are initiated by repressive governments seeking to control protests, prevent people from organizing and suppress dissent. This approach is widely condemned by democratic countries, the United Nations and human rights groups.
After internet service first returned to Gaza in late October, the White House took action wrote in a statement that “restoring communications in Gaza was critical. Aid workers, citizens and journalists must be able to communicate with each other and with the rest of the world. Our government cared about this, worked on it and is happy to see it restored.” The U.S. State Department and the White House National Security Council did not return requests for comment from WIRED on the impact of the two subsequent internet outages in Gaza.