Internet access unavailable for 1 week

Though our servers in California were fine, we did not have internet access from north Jerusalem for the past week, and were unable to post.

Now, we are back online, and will update soon…

[Oh, and by the way, no water either, from Wednesday until Friday…]

UPDATE: This deprivation of internet services was due to two factors —

(1) PalTel, getting nervous about the economic crisis in the West Bank, decided to cut phone service immediately for anyone who was even slightly late in paying their phone bill. This shows great disloyalty to PalTel’s customer base. Many people were affected, including the elderly and the handicapped. Some people don’t even ever get a bill — in Ramallah, it can be thrown over the fence, and then blown into the neighbors’ yards or down the street. In my case, it is because I am on the other side of the Wall, and my phone was put in before the Wall was closed [while the phone service I ordered from Israel’s Bezeq company has not been installed yet…] Because of this greedy + insulting behavior from PalTel, I am strongly considering cancelling my line.

(2) Then, there were a series of hacker attacks on PalTel and including on the Hadara internet lines. Those attacks lasted for days. But, it took until the following week for officials to comment — and they had to be coaxed, at that. A story about these comments is posted on the Ma’an News Agency website, here, reporting that:

    “In comments on PA TV program ‘Facing the Media’ Paltel Chief Executive Ammar al-Ikir said: ‘There is an electronic war against Palestine, which began after Palestine became a member of UNESCO’.”

em>and

    “PA communication and information technology minister Mashhour Abu Dakka told the program ‘we were able to stop 99 percent of the hackers’ attacks and only a few of them were successful … [but] This attack will not be the last, and the hacking will not stop’, Abu Dakka said, calling Wednesday’s shut down a massive loss that tricked current systems by using new tactics” … On Wednesday PalTel issued a statement saying that its’ service is facing “interruptions” which are slowing down the connection, and last week several Palestinian news sites were temporarily shut down by hackers, including sites affiliated to Ma’an”.