Palestine’s growing tech industry was literally blown up by the war between Israel and Hamas – TechCrunch

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Ironically, despite being one of the most economically disadvantaged regions in the world, Gaza has always been a technology hub – not just for Palestine and the Palestinians, but for the world: international companies have been looking for a presence there for many years to work with both talented people Tech freelancers as well as with the startups that gradually emerged from the region. For example, Nvidia, known for its role in the new AI boom, has been working with at least 100 engineers from the region for years, according to sources who helped build these bridges.

Since at least 2008, TechCrunch has been reporting on technology companies from Palestine, some serving their direct audience and others serving the international tech world. Silicon Valley had shown increasing interest in Palestine as a tech hub, but like the ecosystem itself, it is still in its infancy: so far, up to $10 million has been invested in the Palestinian tech ecosystem, according to estimates from those working in the region.

What’s notable is that Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, along with Silicon Valley bigwigs, supported the first-ever programming academy in Gaza in 2017.

Gaza Sky Geeks, a Gaza-based initiative supported by Alphabet that provides upfront investment, training and technology resources to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, is a beacon of entrepreneurship in the region.

All of that has now virtually disappeared, as have the buildings in Gaza itself.

Israel is currently retaliating militarily against the attacks on its people, on its territory and the subsequent hostages taken by Hamas – the ruling organization in Gaza that kidnapped at least 150 people in brutal attacks on Israel over the weekend that left them dead and brought 1,300 people to Gaza.

This strategy has resulted in the bombing of the “Gaza Strip” to wipe out Hamas and get its hostages back. So far, over 1,500 people have been killed in Palestine. Israel’s tech industry – the country’s largest export and single largest contributor to GDP – is also taking a major hit (read about it here), but the impact on Gaza’s smaller and more fragile ecosystem has inevitably been considerably more serious. The resulting physical, economic and social destruction leaves the future of the local technology industry in doubt.

Quite simply: no one can escape the consequences of war, especially not the technical workers.

“What is happening with the technology in Gaza is that Israel is exploiting it. It will be wiped out,” a source in the area told TechCrunch.

Israel has now massed soldiers near northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground offensive in the densely populated enclave. About 1.1 million people living in northern areas were ordered to leave the next day. The United Nations has warned of “devastating humanitarian consequences” of these latest moves. A total blockade is imposed on the territory as fuel, food and water are running out. Israel says it will not lift restrictions unless Hamas releases all hostages.

Speaking to Ryan Sturgill, an American citizen and former head of the Gaza Sky Geeks accelerator run by sponsor Mercy Corps and an NGO aid organization, the situation on the ground appears grim after waves of shelling by the Israeli military.

“The area around the Mercy Corps building, where Gaza Sky Geeks were housed, was razed. The structure stands but is destroyed. The front kind of ripped off,” he said.

Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG) is the largest tech hub in Palestine, offering a wide range of tech training on a large scale. In 2022, 5,000 programmers and developers from across the West Bank and Gaza Strip completed the program.

Video evidence posted on Linkedin (pictured above) shows a blown-up building with the Mercy Corps sign.

“Who knows what will happen. The offices are destroyed, the fiber optic lines are destroyed. The universities are being destroyed. Three main universities in Gaza, all of which produce computer science graduates, will be leveled. I don’t even know if people will ever be able to return to northern Gaza after what is happening today. The educational institutions that exist there have disappeared,” Sturgill added.

Since January, he has been helping Palestinian technology startups raise capital in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“So far there has been quite significant growth. Many companies in Saudi Arabia have set up back offices [in Palestine] for developing all sorts of new companies and even apps that are now growing in the Gulf because Saudi Arabia has grown so quickly on the technology front. Nvidia and other international companies have outsourcing operations in Palestine. Apple has outsourcing activities, Microsoft has R&D, and they want to expand it even further. There are companies that have 200 developers sitting in offices in Ramallah,” he said.

“I have spoken to all the heads of these different offices, most of them are in Israel. They are very positive people who want to try to support the tech industry there and those efforts have worked well and are growing,” he added.

In fact, one of the largest Palestinian VC funds, Ibtikar, had recently launched its second fund worth $30 million.

High-growth companies from Palestine include Menalytics (data analytics, in which Flat 6 Labs invests); Olivery (Last Mile Logistics, Flat6Labs and Ibtikar Fund); Coretava (employee and customer loyalty); and Sellenvo (an Amazon fulfillment partner).

Sturgill said that in addition to the extremely difficult conditions in the Gaza Strip, which is being hit by Israeli missiles, the situation in Ramallah was also “extremely tense.” I have the feeling that the situation there will get significantly worse in the next few weeks.”

Iliana Montauk, co-founder and CEO of Manara – a social impact startup funded by Y Combinator, Seedcamp, Reid Hoffman, Eric Ries, Marc Benioff, Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, among others – told Techcrunch via email, that connectivity has decreased significantly in the last 24 hours.

“Although Gaza has been bombed many times before, this time is a completely different situation for the technology sector for several reasons. The electricity was shut off throughout the building [Gaza] stripes. A significant portion of the infrastructure was bombed (including both ISPs and many tall residential buildings housing cell phone towers). Entire middle-class neighborhoods are being destroyed.”

She said that in the past, when an entire neighborhood was destroyed, it was usually on the border with Israel and a poorer area, which would have less impact on the tech sector.

“The technology sector in Gaza is currently almost completely incapacitated,” she said. “Most people are in too much danger to work; Some have evacuated three times in the last 24 hours, moving from a friend’s house to their family’s house because every neighborhood they land in is the next one to be bombed. “They usually get a warning to evacuate their homes ten minutes before a bombing, so they don’t sleep and have to constantly monitor the situation to be able to evacuate within a minute.”

“Most people have completely lost their cell phone and internet access connections or only have access to 2G through their cell phones. There is now no electricity for even a few hours a day and people are running out of gas to power their generators,” she added.

Manara has around 100 software engineers in Gaza, some of whom work remotely for technology companies in Silicon Valley/Europe.

Montauk said a software engineer who works at Upwork disappeared for several days until he was found alive.

Dalia Awad, whose Medium post about joining Google from Gaza went viral in 2021 (it was number 1 on Hacker News and at one point tweeted by Paul Graham), returned to Gaza to complete her university degree after her internships at Google and Datadog. She was offered a full-time job at Datadog in Paris, but decided to stay home in Gaza and get a remote job to be close to family.

On Tuesday she wrote to Montauk: “Tonight was the worst night ever. Luckily, my family and I are doing well. The bombing was everywhere and we couldn’t know where it was because there was no internet. Many of my friends lost their houses in the Rimal area. There is no WiFi internet, we connect using the cellular data on our phones but it is only 2G and the connection takes a few minutes and then drops. We can only send WhatsApp messages. So we can’t really read news on social media. In the morning we saw these videos from our friends who shared them on WhatsApp, but it takes FOREVER to download a video of a few seconds.”

Montauk said Awad had not responded to her in the past day.

Mai Temraz, Manara’s first employee, is based in San Bernardino, California. Her family lives in Gaza City. They narrowly escaped a bombing (she posted). [Content warning] a video on Instagram of them bleeding). She said: “My family narrowly survived an attack on a building next to them in Gaza. They ask people to go WHERE?? Nobody is safe [sic.] somewhere in Gaza.”

Montauk, a former director of Gaza Gaza Sky Geeks, said: “Before this escalation, the tech scene in Gaza was growing. I was just in Riyadh and met companies in Gaza that are hiring entire software development teams. Upwork and other Silicon Valley companies are now hiring software engineers from the Gaza Strip. Additionally, some had left to work abroad at companies like Google, Amazon, Qualtrics, etc. When I was last in Gaza a year ago, almost everyone I spoke to asked me how they could find a job and leave Gaza. They were afraid of more bombings and wanted to raise their children in a place without such high risk. These people just want to live a normal life.”

Those living in the West Bank say the activities in Gaza have had an inevitable impact.

“For a Palestinian young woman like me living in the West Bank, I can confirm that there has been a noticeable halt in activity,” said Leen Abubaker of Flow Accelerator and co-founder of Sawaed19. “Tech companies are either operating on very limited scale as employees struggle to reach their offices in the West Bank due to unsafe roads blocked by Israeli occupation forces and settlers, or they have been forced out of business entirely in Gaza.”

She added that a number of buildings in Gaza that are crucial to the technology industry there, such as Burj Al-Wattan, have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and that the technology industry is not the top priority in the urgent situation. “How can you detach yourself from the burdensome reality and hold on to the remaining glimmers of hope for your business?”

Mohammad Alnobani is a Palestinian founder of The Middle Frame, an Arab imaging platform based on AI tools that aims to shatter stereotypes about the Arab world through images and reduce bias in AI.

He told me he was on his way back from the One Young World Summit in Belfast, talking about peace and reconciliation, and was about to reach the borders to cross into Palestine and return to his family when war broke out.

“The borders were closed and I had to turn around and go back to Jordan,” he said. “I’m still there, constantly checking on my family in Jerusalem and trying to reach my contacts in Gaza.” His co-founder Raya Fatayer is in Ramallah, staying at home with her baby and husband and unable to travel.

“The houses of our fellow entrepreneurs in Gaza have been destroyed by airstrikes, some we can’t even reach because the power is out and they have no electricity,” he said. “Dealing with the situation and at the same time doing our best to advance our work is a daily challenge.”

He said this outbreak of hostilities with Israel was clearly different: “Before, every time Gaza was under airstrikes, we knew that certain areas were almost safe. Obviously no one is safe today.”