The ‘Network of Web Trees’ in Gaza (opens in new tab)

Ah this reminds of Cuba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEplzHraw3c

I bet everywhere with restricted internet something of this sort exists.

It also reminds the tech startup scene in Gaza, when I was browsing Google Maps to see what kind of economy they have there I recall stumbling upon startup schools. It's fascinating to browse the maps and see familiar things on places you wouldn't expect , I wish the best both to Gazans and the Israeli.

Anyway, just for a bit of humanisation of the people there, here is a spontaneous street performans by a Gazan dancer in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLR6uKTZX4

It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Notice how she transforms from fathers little girl into this elegant creature the moment she makes her first move? I think people completely transform into another persona when the assume a role and in this video you can see the transformation. IMHO a similar transformation happens when people have a connection to an environment outside of theirs, therefore this stuff is important for things beyond the practical needs.

this is pretty neat, reminds me of cuba's meshnet system.

i was wondering how all the efforts to buy gazan's eSIMs was going, this seems to be one of the results.

It's not extremely clear to me - they manage to put phones with Esim where there is signal and set up a hotspot for other phones? Or do they maintain hotspots near the border for the people in Gaza to conect to? Or a mix of both?

I went to the NGO to see if there any further technical specifications to read about, it doesn't seem so: https://www.acs-italia.it/gazaweb-e-gli-alberi-della-rete/

it seems to be purely built upon cellular connectivity and hotspots!

I'm shocked there's no meshnet stuff involved here, but I suppose we can't see much details beyond the backbone, last-mile connectivity methods are probably extremely hodgepodge.

I've never seen "Gazzawi" used before as a demonym instead of Gazan.

I wonder if something like this will become more prolific sort of like the rise of private gated suburban cities that has their own unrestricted internet jurisdiction vs the public facilities that overtime become ghettos with their own web trees capable of evading surveillance (by the group that wakes up every morning worried about losing it all to the people outside the fence).

Often wars are frontiers for societal shifts that arises from new technological inventions/adaptations. What we are seeing in Gaza very may well become a reality in the West in the future: a divorce of a globally connected world into its own islands that can only be accessed via physical proximity or like in my earlier example, socioeconomic class, even by ethnicity.

Where's the technical details for how this works? Are they just broadcasting wifi hotspots?

I wonder why this is not a situation where Starlink could have been deployed?

> the telecommunications infrastructure has been severely damaged

Distal to the tech here but man, once you see the passive voice vs active voice stuff on this issue, you really can't un-see it. Astounding.

Edit: finished the article. The tech here really is stunning -- like, the ratio of ingenuity to resources is insane.

Article title: The ingenious ‘network tree’ defying Gaza's connectivity blockade

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html