By Victor Merat
Published 4 hours ago, now updated
Elon Musk at a Starlink event in Texas. MICHAEL GONZALEZ/Getty Images via AFP
Internet users called on the billionaire to intervene to enable communication with the area cut off from the world. He responded by promising Saturday to offer a link “to internationally recognized humanitarian organizations.”
More sound, more picture. While the Israeli army launched a bombing campaign of “unprecedented” intensity on the Palestinian enclave on Friday, October 27, telecommunications and the Internet in the area were disrupted, according to the incumbent Hamas government. Palestinian telecommunications company Jawwal confirmed the outage and NetBlocks, an internet access monitoring service, reported a “collapse in connectivity in the Gaza Strip.”
On X (formerly Twitter) the hashtag #StarlinkForGaza It spread quickly with over 3.74 million posts. Thousands of internet users have called on Elon Musk to bring his Starlink satellite internet service to the Gaza Strip, as he did in February 2022 at the start of the war in Ukraine. This technology played an essential role for the Ukrainian army, which used it for communication but also to control its drones and artillery fire.
Founded by SpaceX in 2018, Starlink is a satellite internet service provider. The aim of this constellation of 5,000 satellites, which is to be further expanded, is to cover even the most remote areas on earth.
At midday on Saturday, the American billionaire promised, particularly in response to a message to the elected Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to offer an internet connection “to the United Nations and all internationally recognized humanitarian organizations helping the population of Gaza.”
Elon Musk also clarified that so far no terminal has attempted to connect to Starlink from Gaza. “A telecommunications outage seems morally questionable to me,” he also wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a protest message from the United Nations Telecommunications Agency.
“This cut risks becoming a cover for mass atrocities.”
On the ground, where the humanitarian situation is catastrophic, numerous associations and media have actually warned of the danger of this “blackout”. “This information blackout risks serving as a cover for mass atrocities and contributing to human rights violations going unpunished,” warned Deborah Brown, head of the NGO Human Rights Watch, in a press release. Concerns shared by Doctors Without Borders and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“We have lost contact with our staff in Gaza, health facilities, health workers and the rest of our humanitarian partners on the ground. “This siege gives me serious concerns about their safety and the immediate health risks to vulnerable patients,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
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