Elon Musk intervened in the war between Israel and Hamas. His offer to activate the Starlink satellite internet in the Gaza Strip angered the Israeli government. This is what the dispute over the Internet in a war zone is about.
What is Starlink?
Starlink launched in 2020 as a civilian project intended to bring internet to remote areas. Musk’s space company Space-X relies on thousands of satellites for this purpose. People can rent terminals from Brazil to Brandenburg. These are small boxes with antennas that connect to the satellites and provide fast internet.
In 2022, Russia marched towards Kiev, and shortly afterwards Musk activated Starlink in Ukraine. What sounded like PR actually benefited the Ukrainian military. The head of the Ukrainian secret service said CNNStarlink plays an important role in the course of the war.
Musk is uncomfortable with this, at least according to his biographer Walter Isaacson. The entrepreneur said Starlink was not intended for war. People should use it to “do good, peaceful things, not drone attacks.” When Ukraine wanted to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet with drones, Musk prevented the plan: He cut off his satellite internet in the region around Crimea. He himself claims that he simply rejected a Ukrainian request to activate the technology.
What did Musk offer Gaza?
Over the weekend, Musk wrote on his Platform X that Space-X would “support communication links with internationally recognized aid organizations.” However, no Starlink terminals from the Gaza Strip have yet made contact with its satellites. The Israeli public radio station Kan News reported that a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority said they were talking to Space-X.
What is the communication situation in Gaza?
On October 7, Hamas killed more than 1,400 people, many of them civilians, and kidnapped more than 200 people in Israel. Three days after Israel’s counterstrikes began, the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs said airstrikes had destroyed two of Gaza’s three cell phone lines. The outages are believed to be making Hamas’ communication more difficult, as well as the coordination of humanitarian aid.
Current Data from the IODA analysis project from several American universities show that connections in Gaza have deteriorated significantly since October 13th. After strong Israeli air strikes on Friday, there was almost no internet left in Gaza. The organization Access Now, which campaigns against Internet blockades, speaks of eleven providers affected. She calls on Egyptian mobile phone companies to “urgently expand” their services to the people of Gaza. Gaza was not entirely without communication at the beginning of the week. On Sunday, the Palestinian provider Paltel said it was gradually restoring landline, mobile and internet services.
How does Israel react?
The Israeli government interprets Musk’s move as a positioning on the part of Hamas. “Israel will use all means at its disposal to combat this,” wrote Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi. Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, will use Starlink for its terror. “There’s no doubt about it, we know it, and Musk knows it.” Karhi called on Musk to make the release of “our kidnapped babies, sons, daughters, elderly people” a condition for using Starlink. As long as this doesn’t happen, his ministry will “cut all connections with Starlink.”
How does Musk comment on the Middle East conflict?
Israel’s government doesn’t speak well to Musk anyway: he shared questionable content several times. For example a faulty card, which suggests that Hamas supporter Iran is surrounded by US military bases and is therefore more of a victim than an aggressor. However, the military bases shown do not exist.
Since Musk X – then still Twitter – took over a year ago, he opened the platform to previously banned anti-Semites, including the rapper Kanye West.
Shortly after the Hamas terrorist attack, Musk recommended two X user accounts as supposedly good sources of information from the war, and one of the two shared Hamas propaganda. Musk repeatedly interacts with anti-Semitic users; just this weekend he responded with reference to Starlink to an influential user who denies Israel’s right to exist and equates it with the Nazis.
However, shortly after his offer, Musk said he didn’t know whether there were any Starlink terminals in Gaza. Without it, a connection to its satellites is not possible. In any case, his company will “take extraordinary steps to ensure that it only “will be used for humanitarian purposes”. How he wants to guarantee this is still unclear.