Four days of blackout: News of developments in Israeli aggression sparse amid network outage

Telecommunications have been out for over 72 hours in the Gaza Strip, internet monitor NetBlocks said on Monday.

The blackout has made it much harder to get hold of information on what’s taking place in Gaza as the Israeli onslaught continues past its 100th day.

Palestinian telecom operator Paltel announced on Friday that all its services were out in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing aggression.

The current disruption is the longest-sustained blackout since the aggression started, according to NetBlocks.

Repair crews for the company were targeted while trying to fix the telecommunication lines in the strip. Two crew members, Nader Abu Hajjaj and Bahaa al-Rayes, were killed on Saturday when an Israeli shell directly hit the company car they were in as they worked to fix the phone lines in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Paltel said.

Thirteen of the company’s staff have been killed in the Occupation military assault since October 7, the company said.

This is the sixth time that communication and internet services have been completely cut off in Gaza since the start of the Israeli aggression, as military bombardment continues to lay waste to the enclave’s infrastructure.

Airstrikes hitting phone lines and the lack of fuel were the causes behind the previous telecommunication disruptions, starting on October 21. Bombardment damage to the network had previously led to a 12-hour outage of telecommunication services in December, before the connection returned slowly. On November 16, fuel shortages led to a complete shutdown of services, which were only restored two days later after a quantity of fuel was brought in through the Rafah border crossing specifically for the telecommunications generators.