Gaza on brink of communication blackout: Palestinian Minister

Gaza, Nov 14 (IANS) Palestine's Minister of Telecommunications and IT, Ishaq Sidr warned that the Gaza Strip is facing an imminent, complete halt of communications and internet services by Thursday.

Addressing a news conference in the West Bank, the Minister said that the expected interruption is due to the depletion of fuel supplies and is expected to exacerbate the ongoing humanitarian crisis by hindering Palestinians’ ability to reach emergency, relief and rescue services, CNN reported.

An outage could prevent Civil Defense and Red Crescent teams from coordinating a response to emergency sites, he said..

Any interruption between the crews of these groups on the ground and their centres of communication "may cause the inability to direct these crews to distress sites, which means the loss of many lives, and deliberately depriving our people in Gaza of their right to communicate, especially in light of the displacement and continuous bombing", CNN quoted Sidr as saying. 

The Minister called these developments as a “violation of international law and basic human rights”.

In southern Gaza, intermittent internet access is still available. 

Since October 11, the Gaza Strip has been under an electricity blackout, following Israel’s shutting off the electricity supply and the depletion of fuel reserves for Gaza’s sole power plant.

The entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment, remains banned by the Israeli authorities.