RAMALLAH (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy in the Palestinian Authority government, Abdul Razzaq Al-Natsheh, warned on Friday that phone and internet services in Gaza will be affected starting Friday evening due to fuel depletion.
Al-Natsheh said in a statement, that this “exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe, and deprives citizens of their right to communicate to reach emergency and relief services.”
“With the continuation of the Israeli aggression for more than 460 days, and the escalation of the Israeli occupation practices that hinder the arrival of fuel convoys, the fuel crisis has been exacerbated, affecting the quantities allocated for relief, health and service institutions,” he added.
Al-Natsheh pointed out that “fuel is currently the only source for operating communications networks in the Gaza Strip, which exposes these services to the risk of complete outage if fuel is not available.”
He stressed that “it was not possible to bring in fuel during the past days, which led to severe shortage of the quantities needed to operate networks, which will lead to power outage of many Palestinian telecom stations in the Strip.”
Al-Natsheh pointed out that “the North Gaza Governorate has already been suffering from a complete interruption in telecommunications services for about 100 days, due to Israeli ban on entry of fuel into the area.”
He also stressed that “the interruption of telecommunications services under these circumstances will hinder the work of civil defense and ambulance services.
