In Gaza, Keeping the Internet on Can Cost Lives but Also Save Them

Forced to flee his home yet again as war raged across the Gaza Strip, Khalil Salim was desperate to get his family to safety but how could he be sure he wasn’t leading them deeper into danger?

He needed up-to-date information and so he went online and checked out the official social media accounts of the Israeli army and other online sources.

"We would take instructions from the internet. We couldn't assess the internal fighting ... so we would follow the news and channels and look at Facebook and see what people wrote," Salim said.

But when he could not get a signal or a connection, he was left in the dark, with no sure way of plotting a safe route.

"What was pitiful is that (the Israeli army) would put instructions on their Facebook and we wouldn't even have internet. It would be very difficult for us to find out that there were instructions to do this and not that. Sometimes we would spend two days, sometimes a week, without internet."

In the rubble of Gaza, it can be difficult and dangerous to get online but tech activists and Palestinian engineers are making sure the enclave does not go totally dark, securing a precious digital lifeline for thousands of people.

Preserving this connection comes at a price and the risks can be deadly for desperate users clambering to high ground to get a signal or engineers travelling to dangerous areas to repair damaged cables or telecoms towers.

In May, an Israeli strike hit a gathering of people outside a Gaza City shop that provides an internet signal for customers, killing at least three people and wounding more than 20, medics said.

Salim knows all too well what drove those people to that shop.

"Internet is life; without the internet, (life) has no meaning, it is like a prison," the IT engineer and pharmacist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Al-Mawasi, an area on the western outskirts of Khan Younis where he now lives with his family after fleeing the border city of Rafah.

THE GIFT OF ACCESS

Israel launched its offensive on Gaza after fighters from the Hamas Islamist militant group attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel responded by assaulting the coastal enclave, vowing to annihilate the group. Almost 40,000 people have since been killed in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza’s health authorities, with thousands more bodies feared buried under the rubble.

Gaza's economy and infrastructure have been devastated by months of relentless bombing and conflict. Houses, roads, schools, and hospitals have been obliterated and around 70% of the infrastructure needed for communication and technology has been damaged or destroyed.

Tech entrepreneurs outside Gaza are using electronic SIMs, or eSIMs, to help strengthen Gaza's frayed digital lifeline.

An eSIM gives users the option of activating a mobile network's cellular data plan without actually having a physical SIM card. They can be activated using a QR code, allowing users to connect in roaming mode to a foreign network.

For example, Gaza Online, a volunteer group, provides free eSIMs to families to help them stay connected to each other. The group relies on in-kind donations of eSIM activation codes and matches them with families in Gaza through WhatsApp.

Early in the war, an eSIM allowed Salim to oversee the evacuation of his daughter, who was wounded in an Israeli bombing in October, to Egypt and then Tunisia. He was also able to advise doctors on her care.

Nadine Hassan, Gaza Online's chief operating officer who is based in Jordan, said her group’s work is becoming "more challenging every day" with funding a particular issue.

The group has been finding it increasingly difficult to buy eSIMs online as vendors keep closing down their accounts, saying they violated terms of service by buying in bulk.

Activating an eSIM requires a relatively new smartphone model and updated software, Hassan said, a tall order for people in Gaza who are preoccupied with securing access to food and clean water.

Another hurdle, and something of a mystery, is the fact that most of the eSIMs only seem to work at night.

"We have no idea why and we can't find an explanation for it," she said.

ENGINEERS RISK LIVES

Even before the war, telecoms services in Gaza were fragile; a World Bank report from earlier this year said the enclave was the only place in the world that still relied on "obsolete" 2G technology and had no mobile broadband coverage.

By February, the enclave's largest telecoms provider, Paltel, had reported more than 10 total collapses in service provision since Oct. 7. Even when its network has been partly working, it has struggled to maintain service in many areas because of the fighting.

Despite the ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, telecoms engineers have been working to restore services, with reports of several being killed while trying to fix damaged infrastructure.

Speaking to the Thomson Reuters Foundation in March, Hani Alami, who heads East Jerusalem-based internet service provider Coolnet, said one of his teams working in the center of Gaza was hit in February during a suspected Israeli attack, with two engineers killed and one injured.

Alami said he had coordinated his team's movements with the Israeli army before they headed out.

"They gave us the green light to move from the first point and while the vehicle was moving on its track, they bombed the vehicle," he said.

Asked about the alleged incident, the Israeli army said in a statement to the Thomson Reuters Foundation that it "follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

Some activists have called on Israel to observe a digital ceasefire as the war drags on.

In an article for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Brett Solomon, former executive director of Internet advocacy watchdog Access Now, said "digital ceasefires must be annexed to traditional ceasefire agreements, encompassing everything from connectivity to censorship."

For now, as he tries to rebuild his life in a half-built house close to the sea, Salim feels more isolated than ever. He can no longer use his eSIM as he is too far from Israeli telecoms towers, he said.

Instead, he must make do with local providers who charge exorbitant fees to go online. It can also take up to a month to get the necessary approvals to get an Internet connection.

That's just too long for people who might have to flee the bombs and bullets again as the conflict waxes and wanes.

Salim would like to get his IT business up and running again so that he can provide for his family. But with no internet, there can be no work.

"If they see you cannot even do a meeting, they become convinced that you cannot do the job."

While world conflicts dominate headlines, Sudan’s deepening catastrophe is unfolding largely out of sight; a brutal war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and flattened entire cities and regions.

More than a year into the conflict, some observers question whether the international community has grown weary of Sudan’s seemingly endless cycles of violence. The country has endured nearly seven decades of civil war, and what is happening now is not an exception, but the latest chapter in a bloody history of rebellion and collapse.

The first of Sudan’s modern wars began even before the country gained independence from Britain. In 1955, army officer Joseph Lagu led the southern “Anyanya” rebellion, named after a venomous snake, launching a guerrilla war that would last until 1972.

A peace agreement brokered by the World Council of Churches and Ethiopia’s late Emperor Haile Selassie ended that conflict with the signing of the Addis Ababa Accord.

But peace proved short-lived. In 1983, then-president Jaafar Nimeiry reignited tensions by announcing the imposition of Islamic Sharia law, known as the “September Laws.” The move prompted the rise of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by John Garang, and a renewed southern insurgency that raged for more than two decades, outliving Nimeiry’s regime.

Under Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, the war took on an Islamist tone. His government declared “jihad” and mobilized civilians in support of the fight, but failed to secure a decisive victory.

The conflict eventually gave way to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, better known as the Naivasha Agreement, which was brokered in Kenya and granted South Sudan the right to self-determination.

In 2011, more than 95% of South Sudanese voted to break away from Sudan, giving birth to the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan. The secession marked the culmination of decades of war, which began with demands for a federal system and ended in full-scale conflict. The cost: over 2 million lives lost, and a once-unified nation split in two.

But even before South Sudan’s independence became reality, another brutal conflict had erupted in Sudan’s western Darfur region in 2003. Armed rebel groups from the region took up arms against the central government, accusing it of marginalization and neglect. What followed was a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign that drew global condemnation and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

As violence escalated, the United Nations deployed one of its largest-ever peacekeeping missions, the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), in a bid to stem the bloodshed.

Despite multiple peace deals, including the Juba Agreement signed in October 2020 following the ousting of long-time Islamist ruler, Bashir, fighting never truly ceased.

The Darfur war alone left more than 300,000 people dead and millions displaced. The International Criminal Court charged Bashir and several top officials, including Ahmed Haroun and Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Alongside the southern conflict, yet another war erupted in 2011, this time in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile region. The fighting was led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM–N), a group composed largely of northern fighters who had sided with the South during the earlier civil war under John Garang.

The conflict broke out following contested elections marred by allegations of fraud, and Khartoum’s refusal to implement key provisions of the 2005 Naivasha Agreement, particularly those related to “popular consultations” in the two regions. More than a decade later, war still grips both areas, with no lasting resolution in sight.

Then came April 15, 2023. A fresh war exploded, this time in the heart of the capital, Khartoum, pitting the Sudanese Armed Forces against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Now entering its third year, the conflict shows no signs of abating.

According to international reports, the war has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced around 13 million, the largest internal displacement crisis on the planet. Over 3 million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries.

Large swathes of the capital lie in ruins, and entire states have been devastated. With Khartoum no longer viable as a seat of power, the government and military leadership have relocated to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

Unlike previous wars, Sudan’s current conflict has no real audience. Global pressure on the warring factions has been minimal. Media coverage is sparse. And despite warnings from the United Nations describing the crisis as “the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe,” Sudan's descent into chaos remains largely ignored by the international community.

In Gaza, Keeping the Internet on Can Cost Lives but Also Save Them