Description
The Israeli attacks on Gaza after October 7 starkly revealed the profound disparity in communication access, as Gazans were repeatedly cut off from the world for extended periods. This raised scrutiny of Israeli control over Palestinian access to global networks, where, for example, Gazans could only use outdated 2nd generation mobile networks, even as Israel operated on 5th generation technology. This paper aims to critically analyze the duality of Israel’s control over telecommunication infrastructure by integrating existing literature on Palestinian access to telecommunication infrastructure with a contextual analysis of qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted in Gaza. Supplementing Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, we argue that Israel’s systematic level of technology control and infrastructural oppression emphasized by near-total information blockade exceeds the framework of colonialism and dehumanization that Said outlined. By situating this case in relation to other historical episodes of colonial infrastructural control in French Algeria, Apartheid South Africa, and US Jim Crow, we sketch out the consequences of this control for broader questions of authoritative representation and imposed dependence. The intentional degradation of Gaza's communication infrastructure is viewed as part of a broader strategy of techno-political control and a method of epistemic violence, wherein the ability of Palestinians to communicate their reality to the world is systematically gagged.
