Musk’s SpaceX Starlink service ‘now active’ in a Gaza hospital, after Israeli permission
SpaceX has begun offering Starlink internet in a hospital in the Gaza Strip, Elon Musk announced on his social media site X, just over five months after receiving permission to start services there from the Israeli government.
Starlink, which uses thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to provide web access, is “now active” in the hospital, Musk wrote in a one-sentence post.
The company and Israel’s communications ministry in February agreed to a series of measures that would allow the system’s use in a field hospital run by the United Arab Emirates while preventing access for Hamas, designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union.
The initiation of service comes with the support of both the UAE and Israel, Musk wrote on X.
The Gulf Arab state’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, thanked the billionaire entrepreneur for supporting the UAE field hospital in Gaza, where many medical facilities have been demolished and medicines are scarce.
The high speed internet would enable potentially life-saving medical consultations via real-time video calling, the UAE foreign ministry said in February.
The UAE, a major oil producer and regional finance and tourism hub, signed a normalisation deal with Israel in 2020 along with Bahrain and Morocco. Sudan later sealed a normalisation agreement with Israel.
The pacts were designed to bring stability and prosperity to the turbulent Middle East.
Starlink is popular in many conflict zones, with a Bloomberg investigation in March revealing widespread examples of equipment being traded and activated illegally or without government clearance in countries including Yemen and Sudan.
The announcement of the Gaza initiative comes as SpaceX is seeking an official distributor to operate the satellite internet service in Sudan, where volunteers and health workers have used Starlink to provide relief during a civil war that started in April last year.
Humanitarian groups have called on Starlink to maintain its service in the country amid a nationwide internet blackout that’s inhibited efforts to provide aid.
Starlink is officially available in most of Europe and North and South America as well as other parts of the world such as Japan, Nigeria and Australia, according to a map on Starlink’s website.
The Starlink map of countries with service availability doesn’t include any country in the Middle East.
