Gaza has suffered a sustained telecommunications outage for a week, the longest since the start of the war with Israel.
A week-long telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip has become a “matter of life and death” and should end immediately, says digital civil rights group Access Now, during the longest continuous blackout since the start of the war in Israel.
“It is unconscionable to play with connectivity in the midst of unprecedented violence and unfathomable human suffering,” Marwa Fatafta, the group’s policy and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said Thursday.
“Internet shutdowns must not be used as weapons of war. Access Now continues to call for an immediate physical and digital ceasefire and the full restoration of telecommunications services in the Gaza Strip.
On January 12, Palestinian internet service provider Paltel announced the complete loss of all telecommunications services in Gaza “due to the ongoing aggression.” Data from Cloudflare Radar confirmed a drastic drop in traffic.
Watchdog NetBlocks, which monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said Thursday the incident had passed the 144-hour mark. “This is the ninth and longest telecommunications outage since the start of the current conflict with Israel,” he said on the X social media platform.
Internet outages have hampered the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, 85 percent of whom are internally displaced. The outages have also made it extremely difficult to document and share information about what is happening on the ground.
Since the start of the war on October 7, Internet traffic in the Gaza Strip has suffered multiple blackouts and outages. Repair teams struggled to reach sites damaged during intense Israeli bombardment and sometimes took significant personal risk to restore connections.
Access Now said it found that the outages across Gaza were the result of a combination of direct attacks on civilian telecommunications infrastructure, restrictions on access to electricity and technical disruptions to telecommunications services.
The power outages come as Israel carries out a devastating bombardment of Gaza, killing at least 24,620 people and injuring 61,830, according to Palestinian authorities.
Access Now has discovered that airstrikes carried out by Israeli forces on October 9 destroyed a building containing both offices and infrastructure for Paltel and Jawwal, two of the Gaza Strip’s main telecommunications providers.
Al-Watan Tower, another building housing media offices and serving as a hub for internet service providers, was also the target of Israeli airstrikes.