In wartime Gaza, a complicating burden: Communication blackouts

By Ghada Abdulfattah and Taylor Luck

DEIR AL BALAH, GAZA; AMMAN, JORDAN - Signaling a new phase of its war against Hamas, Israel has ordered a drawdown of its troop deployment in the northern Gaza Strip. But there was little clarity over when the conflict might end for Gaza Palestinians increasingly left in the dark.

In a statement Monday, the Israeli army said it would begin a series of more targeted strikes against Hamas, and that the withdrawal of several brigades was meant “to gather strength for upcoming activities in the next year, as the fighting will persist.”

Yet even as it embarked on the demobilization, Israel maintained its intense bombing in central and southern Gaza Tuesday. Palestinian health officials said another 200 people were killed, pushing the death toll in Gaza past 22,000 since the war began Oct. 7 with a Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.

In Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, an estimated 60,000 residents of the nearby Bureij refugee camp filled the streets Tuesday amid bombing and artillery fire, days after fleeing their homes.

Many huddled around the Salah ad-Din traffic circle, anxiously searching for a taxi to take them to Rafah at the southern edge of the enclave, where they hoped for a better chance of finding shelter and food. Others erected makeshift tents or simply lay at the edge of the street.  

Amid the chaos, destruction, and terror of war, communication blackouts have been a complicating challenge, with Gaza Palestinians increasingly facing cuts to phone and internet service. Widespread outages have cut Gaza Palestinians off from the outside world and each other, led ambulances to get lost, created food aid mix-ups, and left anxious families wondering for days whether relatives were alive or dead.

“We have returned to the stone ages, but with iPhones,” says journalist Bassem Khalaf as he scales a fire escape to capture a bar of signal.

Attacking the network

Communication blackouts have dogged Gaza since Oct. 27, as fuel shortages hit telecom provider Paltel and Israel repeatedly struck cell towers and underground networks.

According to Paltel, nine enclavewide blackouts of 24 hours or longer have occurred since the start of the war. But their frequency is increasing……….CONTINUE READING AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR