Israel opposes rebuilding Gaza’s Internet access because terrorists could access the Internet

Israel opposed a proposal at a recent United Nations forum aimed at rebuilding the war-torn telecommunications infrastructure in the Gaza Strip on the grounds that the Palestinian link is a ready weapon for Hamas.

The resolution, which was drafted by Saudi Arabia for last week’s summit of the UN’s International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, is aimed at restoring internet access to millions of residents of the cut-off Gaza.

It eventually passed under a secret ballot on June 14 – but not before softening to remove some of its harsher language about Israel’s responsibility for the destruction of Gaza. The US delegate to the ITU summit had specifically objected to these references.

Israel, for its part, had criticized the proposal as a whole. Israel’s ITU delegate described it as “a resolution that, while sounding good in its intent to rebuild telecommunications infrastructure, distorts the reality of the ongoing situation in Gaza,” according to a recording of the session reviewed by The Intercept . The delegate further argued that the resolution does not address that Hamas has used the Internet “to prepare acts of terror against Israeli civilians” and that any reconstruction effort should include unspecified “safeguards” that would prevent the potential use of the Internet for terrorism.

“Based on this reasoning, Gaza will never have internet.”

“Based on this reasoning, Gaza will never have internet,” Marwa Fatafta, a policy adviser with the digital rights group Access Now, told The Intercept, adding that Israel’s position is not only incoherent, but in essentially disproportionate. “You can’t punish the entire civilian population just because you fear a Palestinian faction.”

Israel’s Communications Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Bringing Gaza back online

When delegations to the ITU, a UN agency that facilitates cooperation between governments on telecommunications policy, began meeting in Geneva in early June, the most pressing issue on the agenda was getting Gaza back online. Israel’s months-long bombardment of the enclave has cut fiber cables, flattened cell towers and generally destroyed the physical infrastructure needed to communicate with loved ones and the outside world.

A breakaway Gaza Strip also threatens to add to the war’s already staggering death toll. Although Israel makes its own efforts to warn civilians of impending airstrikes, such warnings are transmitted using cellular and Internet connections that the country’s air force routinely levels. It’s a cycle of data degradation that began at the start of the war: The more Israel bombs, the harder it is for Gazans to know they’re going to be bombed.

The resolution passed last week would provide “much-needed ITU assistance and support to Palestine in rebuilding its telecommunications sector.” While the agency has debated the plight of Palestinians on internet access for years, the new proposal comes at a crisis point for data access across Gaza, as much of the Strip has been reduced to rubble and civilians struggle to access to food and water. only cellular signals and Wi-Fi.

The ITU and other intergovernmental bodies have long demanded Palestinian sovereignty over its Internet access. But the Saudi proposal was notable in that it explicitly emphasized Israel’s role in blocking Gaza’s connection to the world, whether through bombs, bulldozers or draconian restrictions on technology imports. That Saudi Arabia was behind the resolution is not without irony; in 2022, Yemen was plunged into a four-day internet blackout following airstrikes by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

Without naming Israel, the Saudi resolution also called on the ITU to monitor the war’s devastating effects on Palestinian data access and provide regular reports. The resolution also condemns both the “widespread destruction of critical infrastructure, the failure of telecom services and the outage of mobile telephones that have occurred throughout the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression by the occupying power” and “obstacles practiced by the occupying power in preventing and the use of new communication technologies.”

In a session debating the resolution, the US delegate told the council: “We have made it clear to the sponsors of this resolution that we disagree with some of the characterizations,” particularly the language blaming the destruction of Gaza and the forced use of obsolete technology in Israel. “The United States cannot support this resolution in its current form as drafted,” the delegate continued, according to a recording reviewed by The Intercept.

Whether the US ultimately voted for the resolution or not – the State Department did not respond when asked – it appears to have been successful in weakening the version that was eventually adopted by the ITU. The version that passed was stripped of any clear mention of Israel’s role in destroying and blocking Gaza’s internet access, and only obliquely refers to “obstacles practiced to prevent the use of new communications technologies.”

The State Department also did not respond to other questions from The Intercept about the resolution, including whether the administration shares Israel’s terror-related objections to it.

The US has taken a tougher stance on civilian internet disruptions caused by a military aggressor in the past. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the national internet outages it caused, the State Department stated, “The United States condemns actions that block or degrade Internet access in Ukraine, which cut off critical channels for sharing and learning information, including war .”

Outdated technology

The adopted resolution also calls on ITU member states to “make every effort” to preserve what remains of the Palestinian telecom infrastructure and to allocate the necessary funds to “return communications to the Gaza Strip” in the future. This proposed reconstruction includes the activation of 4G and 5G mobile service. While smartphones in the West Bank connect to the Internet at wireless 3G speeds inadequate for many data-hungry applications, Gazans must make do with slow, patchy 2G service — an outdated standard that was introduced in the United States in 1992.

Fatafta, of Access Now, noted that Israel has a real interest in preventing Gaza from entering the 21st century: surveillance and censorship. Gaza’s reliance on insecure 1990s cell phone technology and Israeli fiber links makes it trivial for Israeli intelligence agents to intercept messages and phone calls and create internet blackouts at will, as has been the case throughout the war.

The resolution is “an important step because the current status quo cannot continue,” she said. “There is no scenario where Gaza can be allowed to maintain a 2G network where the rest of the world has already moved to 5G.”