we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
I used to think tech was about convenience; in Gaza, I learned it’s about survival.
Here I am in Nuseirat, standing on my rooftop raising my phone toward the sky, trying to catch a fleeting signal. Photo: Abdalkhaliq Abugaza
Standing above the water tanks on my roof in Gaza, I raise my phone toward the night sky, hoping to catch a foreign signal. The way some people search for stars, I search for flickers of connection—all while warplanes blink silently above me.
It wasn’t always like this. I was born in Saudi Arabia, surrounded by the latest technology, convenience, and comfort. I thought I had seen it all. But when I moved to Gaza in 2020, I discovered a different kind of innovation—not built in labs, but in living rooms and alleyways.
At first, I was fascinated by how Gazans used solar panels, fuel generators, and backup batteries to power daily life. But after the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, as power stations collapsed one after another, even those solutions started to fail. Winter dimmed the sun, fuel prices skyrocketed, and batteries—well, they need charging, too.
So Gazans adapted. One method was using eSIMs (embedded SIM cards) to connect to Israeli or Egyptian networks. But not all phones support eSIMs. To bridge that gap, some residents created makeshift Wi-Fi hotspots, called network trees. Phones equipped with eSIMs are hoisted high using ropes or buckets—sometimes even hung on trees—to catch the faintest signals from across the border. These setups, sometimes supported by NGOs like the Italian group Associazione di Cooperazione e Solidarietà (Association of Cooperation and Solidarity, ACS), are lifelines.
Another form of defiance came from a teenager dubbed the “Newton of Gaza.” He wasn’t some YouTube engineer or private school prodigy. Just a boy surrounded by rubble, dirt, and a half-broken fan—the kind most people toss in the trash. Using scrap wires, a plastic rotor, and a mind powered by necessity, he built a wind-powered generator to light up his family’s shelter.
In Gaza, wind isn’t just a breeze — it’s an untapped power source when everything else fails. His invention, crude but effective, gave his family something precious: a few working light bulbs and the ability to charge a phone. That’s not just electricity. That’s safety. That’s communication. That’s the chime of a message finally being delivered or a flashlight turning on in a blackout.
When I saw the video of him explaining the setup, I couldn’t stop thinking: This is Gaza. Not just surviving, but innovating in the ruins. He didn’t have a lab—he had a makeshift rooftop. He didn’t have a budget—he had imagination. And he didn’t invent to impress anyone. He did it because, here, electricity is the difference between silence and being heard.
Hossam Al-Atta., the “Newton of Gaza.” Photo: Al Jazeera (screenshot)
Then there’s “street internet”—the most common, and interestingly, the most communal. If you walk around Gaza long enough, you’ll spot clusters of people huddled around corner shops, community centers, or even someone’s living room window—all tapping into the same slow, flickering signal. It works like a digital ration system: you buy a small card from a hotspot provider, scratch off the code, and that gives you anywhere from one to four hours of access, usually at speeds that feel like 2003.
Displaced Gazans in Deir Al-Balah gather around a makeshift hotspot vendor in a tent-filled open field to purchase street internet cards and connect to a flickering Wi-Fi signal. Photo: Ali Sbaih
But it’s not just about loading a webpage. It’s about sending your cousin a voice message to say you’re alive. It’s about uploading one PDF for your school before the connection dies. It’s kids checking WhatsApp to see if their school has reopened. It’s 12th-grade Tawjihi students like me desperately searching for old exam questions before the time runs out.
I still remember running to the hotspot at the end of our street after a week without internet. I bought the slowest, cheapest card they had—0.1 Mbps—and stood there in the cold just to download two math exercises. It took 20 minutes, but when the “sent” tick appeared, I felt like I had conquered something. In Gaza, even a 10 KB image isn’t just data. It’s proof of life.
But what happens when even those flickers go out?
In the early months of the war, I lived for nearly a month without internet or phone service. Israel regularly bombed major cell towers, plunging entire regions into silence. Repairs could take weeks—engineers have to move cautiously to avoid drawing fire from drones.
I still remember one night when the signal returned. It was past midnight, and our neighbors began shouting, cheering. Just one bar—that’s all it took to make people dance. Later, the internet came back. Our devices were dead, but we were alive. And that was enough.
As a Tawjihi student, this blackout deeply impacted my education. I remember studying calculus one evening when a nearby bombing shattered everything—windows, silence, even the ground beneath us trembled like jelly. A red light flashed through the window, then dust, glass, and freezing wind rushed through. The power system fried. Our LED lights went dark. My ears rang with sirens and screams. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing—relatives thought we were dead. And still, the worst part wasn’t the bombing. It was the darkness afterward.
I used to think tech was about convenience—a cool website, a fast app. In Gaza, I learned it’s about survival—and sometimes, even freedom. Since I plan to become a web developer, one bar of cell signal, the glow of my phone in the dark, represents motivation to keep learning, coding, and joining my fellow Gazans in innovation.
At first, I felt a sting of envy — how did the Newton of Gaza, a 15-year-old, manage to create something so ingenious from rubble? My brother told me that the 17th-century Newton used to study by torchlight, and I laughed, now that I’ve lived through it, too. But honestly, I’m proud to walk a similar path. I’m building my skills not in a lab, but in the middle of chaos. And I won’t let a few missiles stop me.
Each Instagram story, each voice message, each flicker of Wi-Fi is not just data—it’s defiance. It’s how we say: We are still here.
