Blackouts in Gaza must not be used as ‘weapons of war’: Rights group
Al Jazeera
Gaza is under a weeklong sustained telecoms outage, the longest since the onset of the war with Israel.
A weeklong telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip has become a “matter of life and death” and should end immediately, digital civil rights group Access Now says during the longest continuous outage since Israel’s war began.
“It is unconscionable to toy with connectivity amidst unprecedented violence and unfathomable human suffering,” Marwa Fatafta, the group’s policy and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Thursday.
“Internet shutdowns must not be used as weapons of war. Access Now continues to call for an immediate physical and digital ceasefire and for the full restoration of telecommunications services in the Gaza Strip.”
Palestinian internet service provider Paltel announced the complete loss of all telecommunications services in Gaza “due to the ongoing aggression” on January 12. Cloudflare Radar’s data confirmed a drastic drop in traffic.
The watchdog NetBlocks, which monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the internet, said on Thursday the incident had passed the 144-hour mark. “The disruption is the ninth and longest sustained telecoms outage since the onset of the present conflict with Israel,” it said on the social media platform X.
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