People in Gaza are relying on their cell phones during the current conflict. But the network isn't reliable and people are running out of minutes. So the local cell phone company has decided to help. Reporter Daniel Estrin has the story.
Office of Jawwal phone company
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI's THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI's THE WORLD is the program audio.
MARCO WERMAN: While they wait for a ceasefire people in Gaza are mostly staying indoors. They don't wanna get caught in the crossfire. Many are depending on their cell phones to stay connected with relatives and friends, but the cell phone network in Gaza is barely functioning. Reporter Daniel Estrin has the story.
DANIEL ESTRIN: Call a cell phone in Gaza these days and you often get this message:
CELL PHONE MESSAGE: The mobile you are trying to reach is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later, thank you.
ESTRIN: It's the last thing Ahmed Ali in Gaza wanted to hear when he was trying to reach his friend in an area hit by Israeli war planes.
AHMED ALI: I tried to call his mobile a hundred times, all the time. I tried to send him an SMS, I can't send him even an SMS to make sure he's all right.
ESTRIN: There's only one Palestinian cell phone service. It's called Jawwal. It's got about 230 cell phone towers in the Gaza Strip, but the company says only 50 of them are working. Eight were destroyed in Israeli air raids and power cuts have disabled the rest. Amman Aked is the CEO of Jawwal in Ramallah. He says what's left of Gaza's mobile network is being swamped by calls and that could worsen the humanitarian situation there.
AMMAN AKED: They might save somebody's life with a phone call. And that's why we're trying to solve these problems that we have in our network.
ESTRIN: Last week he realized that nearly 80 percent of his customers in Gaza had just about run out of minutes on their cell phones. Most people there use pre-paid minutes and get refill codes at local supermarkets, but stores are mostly closed so Jawwal gave customers free minutes automatically.
AKED: People woke up in Gaza and they found all this money on their mobile phones. They were saying all kinds of rumors about it. Some of them said, "Well this is a donation from another country.†Some of them said, "Oh, okay maybe this is one actually, I think it charged to our mobile phones just to make sure that the militant people actually use their phones and they can look at their locations," all these kind of stories.
ESTRIN: And free phone credit isn't the only surprise for Palestinian cell phone users, even those here in Ramallah in the West Bank. Have you gotten any strange calls lately?
WOMAN: Yeah, from Libya.
MAN: Yeah, I received a call from Libya, from a guy from Libya. He told me he was dialing random numbers.
ESTRIN: In Libya, Yemen, Australia and other countries people have been given free minutes to call Palestinians to show their support. Jawwal says there's been a 30 percent increase in incoming international calls since the war began, but some are starting to get suspicious. Ahmed Ali in Gaza got a call the other day from someone claiming to be from Saudi Arabia. The number on his screen was an international number.
ALI: He asked me, "We want to make sure that you're okay, the resistance is still okay." And I asked him once again what's his name and, "Where are you from in Saudi Arabia?" He didn't answer so I canceled the phone call.
ESTRIN: Rumor has it that Israeli intelligence agents pretending to be from Arab countries are dialing Palestinians to try to get information about Hamas militant locations. The Israeli military isn't commenting on these calls now, but earlier this week the New York Times reported that Israeli officials confirmed they're using this tactic. And meanwhile Israelis have been receiving threatening text messages believed to be from Hamas. The calls are coming in nonstop at Jawwal's Customer Service Center in Ramallah. Yesterday, at least 1,500 people phoned in to complain about suspicious calls from abroad, but CEO Amman Aked says there's little he can do.
AKED: If you wanna block certain calls from certain destinations you probably have to block all the calls, which help isolate Palestine from the rest of the world and that's what we don't wanna do. We don't wanna isolate the Palestinians.
ESTRIN: Because for many Gazans cooped up at home, phone calls are their only way out. For The World, this is Daniel Estrin, Ramallah the West Bank.
transcript