Since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip on  October 7, 2023, Ikhlas Hamouda has been following it from Turkey, and waiting for news from family and friends. 

“I can’t describe what I’m feeling. Words just don’t get across the anxiety and fear I have for my family,” she says. 

The worst night for Ikhlas was October 27, 20 days into the war, when Israeli forces began advancing into the Beit Lahiya area, in northern Gaza, where her family lives. She was unable to contact them, because of communication blackout. Ikhlas was not the only one having to follow news of the bombardment without being able to check on her family or know what had happened to them. Israel's severing of communications and internet links in Gaza caused suffering for family members outside the Strip and those displaced within Gaza.

“We’ve lost touch with our beloved Gaza... may it live in peace.” These words struck young Nour Baaloucha, who lives in Belgium, like a thunderbolt. She had been trying to contact her family, who had fled from the Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza to Deir al-Balah in the south, to escape the heavy shelling near their home. 

Noor says that the difficulty of keeping in touch with her family during the war had caused her endless worry. “Some days, we were going crazy not being able to get hold of them.” She says her greatest fear was that the family would be bombed, especially since houses around theirs had already been hit. 

28-year old Zina Al-Rafati and her three children were forced to move more than once within the Gaza Strip until she finally reached Rafah, thinking it was a safe haven. But her hopes were gone when they were again displaced by the Israeli army which broke its promise, as it always does, of not  attacking southern Gaza. 

Zina remembers well the night of October 19, her second night in Rafah. She and her children were woken by the sound of shelling and found themselves trapped under the rubble of their home. “They pulled us out from under the rubble. There were about 14 of us,” she says. All were severely injured.

Zainab Al-Ghonaimy, the legal advisor and general director of the Center for Women’s Legal Research and Consulting (CWLRCP) in Gaza, insists that freedom of expression and opinion is a guaranteed human right and that all states have incorporated this right in their domestic laws (including the right to communication and internet access). 

Since the start of the war on Gaza, Israel has violated the right to communication and access to the internet repeatedly and for varying periods. According to the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, Israel has cut off all communications and internet in the Gaza Strip at least 13 times since the start of the war. The most recent incident was May 13, 2024, according to the Palestinian Telecommunications Company. 

Ikhlas woke one day to the news that a building in the Al-Shifa medical complex had been struck, killing 26 people. She was watching the news on television when she saw a brown jacket that looked like her brother’s, apparently belonging to someone who had been injured or killed. Ikhlas was unable to contact her brother or anyone in the family to check if he was all right. 

Nour Baaloucha lost contact with her family many times, mostly between November 2023 and January 2024, a period she describes as a “nightmare.”  Nour kept in contact with her journalist friends and with the hospital to find out the names of those killed or wounded. She received an audio recording from a doctor at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where her family had fled, saying: “On this day there are no martyrs or wounded from the Baaloucha family.” Noor held her breath as she listened to the recording, recalling that it was “truly terrifying as I tried to find out whether my family was alive or not.” 

Ikhlas did the same thing to try to find out what had happened to her family at Al-Shifa Hospital. She would call a fellow journalist who was following the news from the hospital, and was frustrated and desperate if he did not call her back. 

Ikhlas wished she was in Gaza with her family, going through what they were going through, instead of watching the war on television. She went through difficult times when the school where her family was sheltering was bombed. Things became even worse when she saw broadcast on television families with children pleading with paramedics to save them. She would scrutinise the footage fearing to see members of her family. 

Zina was in much the same situation. Losing contact with one’s family in such circumstances is the cruellest thing anyone can face in life. The longest time Zina lost contact with her family was for 20 days. She never stopped thinking about them, wondering if they were still alive. 

Nour would try over 50 times a day to call her family . She says she broke her phone from trying so often to check on them, with no success.

After 53 days of being cut off from her family due to Israeli bombing of the networks, Ikhlas finally heard from them. They told her they hid whenever the bombardment became intense and prayed, as they expected to die at any moment. They even sought shelter in an UNRWA school.

The most difficult moment for Ikhlas was when she heard that an Israeli tank had blocked her family's path as they were leaving the school and heading to western Gaza. Her grandmother, who was in a wheelchair, was left lying on the ground all night while the family had no idea what had happened to her.

When Zina was finally back in touch with her family, she was shocked to learn of the death of her uncle, whom she described as a “kind” man. “I loved him very much. He helped me because my husband faced difficult circumstances, being hearing impaired.” Zina was shocked to learn that one of the children in the family had also been killed.

Zainab Al-Ghonaimy, the CWLRCP legal advisor and director general, says that the internet blackout constitutes  another blockade, in addition to the military and economic ones.It is designed to cut Gaza off from the world and stop news of the war and the Israeli army's crimes from getting out.  Al-Ghonaimy maintains that Israel has violated international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention by harming civilians, a criminal act that deserves punishment.

Palestinian women inside and outside Gaza are suffering mentally due to the violation of their natural right to communicate with their relatives. Nour sums up the situation: “When they cut communication links, I felt like they cut us off from everything… from our neighbours, from our history, our geography, even our memory.”