In Gaza, Staying Connected Can Cost Lives But Also Save Them

GAZA STRIP – Forced to flee his home again as war rages in the Gaza Strip, Khalil Salim is desperate to save his family, but how can he be sure he won’t lead them into even more danger?

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

“We would take instructions from the internet. We couldn’t judge the internal fighting … so we would follow the news and channels and look at Facebook and see what people were writing,” Salim said.

However, when he couldn’t get a signal or connection, he was left in the dark, with no sure way to plan a safe route.

“The sad thing is that (the Israeli occupation forces) will put instructions on their Facebook and we won’t even have internet. It will be very difficult for us to know that there are instructions to do this and not that. Sometimes we spend two days, sometimes a week, without internet,” he said.

In the ruins of Gaza, it is difficult and dangerous to connect to the internet, but Palestinian tech activists and technicians are ensuring the enclave does not go completely dark, securing a precious digital lifeline for thousands of people.

Maintaining these connections comes at a high cost and the risks can be deadly for desperate users who climb to high altitudes to get a signal or technicians traveling into dangerous areas to repair damaged cables or telecommunications towers.

“In May, an Israeli strike hit a group of people outside a Gaza City shop providing internet signals to customers, killing three people and wounding more than 20,” the medic said.

Salim knew exactly what drove those people to that shop.

“The internet is life. Without the internet, (life) has no meaning, like a prison,” the IT technician and pharmacist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Al-Mawasi, an area on the western outskirts of Khan Yunis where he has taken refuge with his family after fleeing the border town of Rafah.