“Gaza only operates on 2G,” said Jebril, a Palestinian academic at Cambridge, adding that Israel, which retains control of the enclave's telecoms network, does not allow 3G, 4G or 5G.
“Despite this, the mobile phone is more important than ever in Gaza,” she said, needed for school, emergency communications and checking on relatives in other parts of the strip.
For others, there is a small but lucrative market between traders and the small minority of Palestinians who managed to save or amass large sums of money during the war, according to Tanya Hari, executive director of the Israeli rights group Gisha, which specializes in the movement of people and goods across Gaza's borders.
According to Hari, for the first time in two years, phones are being allowed into Gaza through official channels. “So there is a buzz around it and there is a growing demand for phones as well as accessories,” she added. And just like in the West, some aspire to the status that comes with the iPhone, although this is a tiny minority of the population.
On a recent morning, a handful of members of this minority huddled against the counter of the Tabia mobile phone store in Khan Younis. Pushed out of its previous showrooms, Tabia now operates in a makeshift tent structure with a canvas roof and wooden and metal supports. Its name was printed on an orange and white fabric banner.
It sold everything from budget models like the Redmi A5 and POCO C71, made by Chinese company Xiaomi, to the iPhone 17 Pro, which sells for over $1,000 in the US.
According to store owner Monzer Abu Hamad, as well as customers interviewed by NBC News, war, border restrictions, general logistics delays and chaos have caused prices to previously rise to several times the normal market value. However, the influx of phones has meant those prices have since stabilized.
“There is a lot of demand for devices at the moment, firstly because of high school students, and secondly because education in the Gaza Strip has gone electronic,” Hamad said.
Phones are compact and profitable, making them easier for traders to import than bulky or limited goods such as baby formula, medicine or building materials, said Eran Yashiv, an Israeli economist who has studied and written extensively about Gaza's economy.
“The small group of buyers with access to cash creates a market that traders are keen to serve, even as most households face severe shortages,” he said.
Result? “A distorted economy in which luxury goods can appear in stores while basic necessities remain bottlenecked,” he said, “reflecting the chaotic mix of political control, commercial incentives and humanitarian failures that now characterizes Gaza.”
With ongoing Israeli bombings disrupting every aspect of life – from education and healthcare to news and entertainment – people in the Gaza Strip are increasingly relying on their screens for information and respite.
“The mobile phone is the only device that conveys the truth to the world, and therefore it is an important beacon,” said Farid Kabalan, an economist in Khan Younis.
Mohaned Ahmed Abdel Hafour, 20, is a case in point.
“I use my phone to read, work and everything else. Everything requires a phone,” he said. His old device was damaged in the war – “so I had to buy it.”
Added to this is mistrust among some Palestinians, who see this rapid emergence of new technology as echoes of the massive pager bombings in Lebanon in 2024. Hezbollah said dozens of people were killed and 1,500 wounded in what was widely interpreted as an Israeli intelligence operation.
“After what happened with pagers, I personally wouldn't go near these phones either,” Gisha's Hari said.
