In a territory where 81 percent of buildings lie damaged or destroyed, a small community of young Palestinians is fighting to preserve what remains of Gaza’s digital world.Coders, repair technicians and freelance workers are labouring under impossible conditions to keep the besieged enclave connected to the outside world.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAgainst all odds, Gaza’s youths continue to adapt. They work offline, code in notebooks, store solar power whenever the sun is out, and wait for rare moments of connectivity to send their work to clients around the world.In a war that has taken nearly everything, digital skills have become a form of survival – and resilience.Many now also rely on online work to make a living. But even that fragile lifeline is now hanging by a thread after more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war. Palestinians work on laptops and mobile devices in Gaza despite widespread destruction of telecommunications infrastructure [Al Jazeera]According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Israeli forces have “deliberately and systematically destroyed” the telecommunications infrastructure.“We just always look for another way to get connected, always find another way,” said Shaima Abu Al Atta, a coder working from a displacement camp. “This is what actually gave us purpose because if we didn’t do this, we would just die surviving and not doing anything. We would die internally.”Before the war erupted in October 2023, Gaza had a modest but vibrant tech scene. Innovation hubs hosted coding bootcamps, and hundreds of freelancers worked remotely for international clients. Much of that ecosystem now lies in ruins. Advertisement Shareef Naim, an engineer who led a technology hub, described what was lost. His building housed more than 12 programmers with contracts for companies outside Gaza, he s …
