The war between Israel and Hamas has hampered communications in the Gaza Strip, but the population is managing to connect to the internet thanks to innovative solutions and support from NGOs.
Connecting to the internet has become a challenge for people living in war-torn Gaza, as civilian telecommunications have become another target since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Internet providers in the area have been experiencing severe outages since early October 2023, according to digital rights NGO AccessNow in a report early November.
In recent months, network monitoring services such as Cloudflare Radar and NetBlocks have reported several internet outages in Gaza.
The strip’s main telecom company, Paltel, operated more than 500 cell towers in the enclave, but 80 percent of them were destroyed during the war, according to Paltel’s chief of operations, Hamzah Naseef. told American public radio station NPR in March.
These conditions have led Gazans and humanitarian organizations to find emergency solutions to connect.
Planting ‘network trees’ for internet access
An example is the GazaWeb project by the Italian charity Associazione di Cooperazione e Solidarità (Association for Cooperation and Solidarity, ACS).
With the help of volunteers in Gaza, this organization has helped keep people connected through Israeli and Egyptian cell towers.
Using smartphones compatible with embedded SIM technology (eSIM), the NGO has been able to set up several internet hotspots in the border areas of the Gaza Strip.
Volunteers in the area, called ‘gardeners’, are paid to obtain compatible phones and an eSIM code is sent to them.
Once configured, they hang the devices high in areas where they receive a signal from neighboring countries’ cell towers and serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for people below the phone. These are called ‘network trees’.
Since January, the GazaWeb project has managed to set up fifteen of these ‘trees’ in cities such as Al Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Jabalia and Rafah.
The coordinator of the GazaWeb project, Manolo Luppichini, emphasized the importance of these access points, not only for obtaining information from outside Gaza, but also for daily life within it.
“The lack of internet and the lack of phone signal means that many people are stranded and disconnected from their families, from their relatives, from their friends. They don’t know when something happens, they don’t have the information,” Luppichini told Euronews Next.
However, the availability of this system is constantly changing: the connectivity of each hotspot depends on a single mobile phone, which is placed in a bucket and connected to a power bank, so that the battery lasts at least two to three hours.
“During the hotspot it otherwise sucks a lot more energy [without the power bank] under those conditions it only takes a few minutes,” Luppichini explained.
ADVERTISEMENTThe risk of trying to go online in Gaza
Bombing sometimes makes it impossible to safely charge the batteries, making maintenance of these “network trees” difficult, Luppichini said.
Both setting up the hotspots and using them also became a risk during the war.
Luppichini told Euronews Next that on June 26, eight people were killed in an attack while using one of these access points in Jabalia, north of Gaza.
The number of victims is similar information published by the Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA) about an Israeli bombing in the same area, citing local sources.
ADVERTISEMENT“This is the third time. People who come together to connect are exposed to the threat of bombings because they see this gathering of people and they bomb it,” Luppichini said.
“Obviously you have to gather because there are few places where the signals can be received, it depends on which part of the street you are in,” he added.
At least 20 people were killed while trying to connect to the Internet, according to the GazaWeb coordinator. “The number of victims is always difficult to verify. Many other injured people could be dead,” he explained.
During the war between Israel and Hamas, Gazans shared videos of their daily lives on social media. This is not new, but Luppichini believes there is something distinctive about this conflict.
ADVERTISEMENT“There is a new way to tell stories. It has happened before in different ways, but this is the very first time that some people under such a siege, under such a violent situation, are telling their stories. They are live streaming a genocide,” he said.
South Africa has brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine, something Israel denies.
The challenge of finding a reliable system
ACS began looking for solutions to Gaza’s internet problems in mid-October, at the beginning of the current conflict.
“It was impossible to get satellite phones in through the border,” Luppichini said.
ADVERTISEMENTThey also tried to set up a cell tower to allow a mobile connection from Egypt at the Rafah border, but they were unable to cooperate with the Egyptian authorities.
Signals from Egyptian and Israeli cell towers can penetrate about two to three kilometers inside Gaza.
GazaWeb’s project coordinator said they are currently encouraging their “gardeners” to try to set up these internet access trees in populated areas using the high bucket method.
“Women in particular have difficulty getting out onto the streets and reaching the points where you can get internet. (…) With this bucket system they can get the signal inside the houses,” Luppichini said.
ADVERTISEMENTThis story has been clarified to say that according to the GazaWeb coordinator, people have died trying to connect to the internet.
