In Gaza, virtual chips are breaking the telecommunications blockade – Technologist

Her cell phone vibrates at all times. Emails from all over the world and messages from the Gaza Strip flood Mirna El Helbawi’s phone with words of support, appeals for help and also good news. Like one man stranded in the north of the Palestinian territory, who cried with joy when he discovered a photo of the baby his wife had given birth to far from him, in Rafah, in the south of the enclave.

While the Palestinian telecommunications network was cut off for the 10^th time in three months, this Gazan was able to connect to WhatsApp thanks to a dematerialized SIM card provided by El Helbawi. Along with 10 other volunteers, this 31-year-old Egyptian writer has launched an initiative called “Connecting Gaza” to provide the coastal strip’s inhabitants with free eSIMs, virtual chips enabling them to bypass the communications blockade regularly imposed by the Israeli state.

“Families are scattered. There are countless people without news of their loved ones. During blackouts, it’s impossible to call an ambulance, and emergency services have great difficulty in coordinating the evacuation of the wounded to hospitals. The blackouts also hamper the work of journalists in the field, who play an essential role in documenting the war crimes committed by Israel,” said El Helbawi from her apartment overlooking the rooftops of Cairo.

For the past three months, this former journalist has hardly slept at all. On October 27, 2023, Gaza was cut off from the rest of the world to prepare the ground for the Israeli army’s ground offensive, but the young woman placed her hopes in billionaire Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, who promised to reconnect the Palestinian enclave with his Starlink satellite. But the promise remains unfulfilled.

‘Without a network, we have no voice’

“It was terrifying. We were following the situation hour by hour, and then, all of a sudden, nothing. A stunned silence,” she said. One of her followers on Instagram then inspired her to try using these virtual smart cards, which are available on several internet sites for around $30. To activate them, users scan the QR code sent by the donor with their cell phone. All they then have to do is activate the roaming mode on a foreign network to be able to connect to the Israeli and Egyptian relay antennas that border Palestinian territory, a strip of land 12 kilometers wide and 41 kilometers long.

“I then contacted two journalists in Gaza who had managed to pick up a bit of network on Israeli maps. I sent them two chips. And it worked!” she said. One of them was Ahmed El-Madhoun, a 27-year-old freelance journalist. Originally from Gaza City, he was the first to manage to connect to an eSIM in the middle of a blackout. “Without a network, we have no voice. You feel all alone, isolated from the world. You tell yourself that what they want is for you to die in silence,” said el-Madhoun, in a message sent to Le Monde.

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