Communications technology is often associated with a high degree of mobility and relative freedom from territorial constraints. However, under Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land, the sphere of telecommunications has become a privatized site of control and a corporate instrument of territorial expansion.

This flash-report examines four central dimensions of telecommunications under occupation: the de-development of the Palestinian telecommunications sector under the framework of the Oslo Accords and by means of military violence; telecommunications as a space of mass surveillance for the Israeli security apparatus; the exploitation of the Palestinian captive cellular market; and the role of Israeli cellular infrastructure in the expansion of the illegal settlement enterprise.

The flash-report also provides an overview of the main Israeli and international telecommunications corporations complicit in the occupation.