Internet, phone service gradually return after vanishing for most of Gaza amid heavy bombardment
internet service abruptly vanished for most of Gaza amid a heavy Israeli bombardment, the crowded enclave was coming back online Sunday as communications systems were gradually being restored.
That's a welcome development for Gaza following a communications blackout that began late Friday as Israel expanded ground operations and launched intense airstrikes that illuminated the night sky with furious orange flashes. A rare few Palestinians with international SIM cards or satellite phones took it upon themselves to get the news out.
By Sunday morning, though, phone and internet communications had been restored to many people in Gaza, according to telecommunications providers in the area, Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.
After weeks of a total Israeli siege, Palestinians in Gaza felt the vise tightening.
Social media had been a lifeline for Palestinians desperate to get news and to share their terrifying plight with the world. Now even that was gone.
Many were consumed with hopelessness and fear as the Israeli military announced a new stage in its war, launched in a response to a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, and troops crossed into Gaza.
Exhausted and afraid her link to the world was so tenuous it could drop at any moment, 28-year-old Palestinian journalist Hind al-Khoudary said the massive airstrikes that shook the ground exceeded anything she had experienced over the past three weeks or any of the four previous Israel-Hamas wars.
“It was crazy," she said.
Residents on Saturday darted across dilapidated neighborhoods under heavy bombardment to check on loved ones.
