Egypt causes cellular service outage along Gaza border - report

The outage is specifically affecting the Eshkol Regional Council. Residents reported that they have been unable to receive calls or call other numbers.

By TZVI JOFFRE
Scouts use their mobile phones while standing near a bomb shelter as a spike in cross-border violence with Gaza continues, in Ashkelon (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Scouts use their mobile phones while standing near a bomb shelter as a spike in cross-border violence with Gaza continues, in Ashkelon
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
A severe cell service outage has been reported in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, tweeted Yediot Aharonot reporter Matan Tzuri.
The outage is specifically affecting the Eshkol Regional Council. Residents reported that they have been unable to receive calls or call other numbers. The issue is being investigated.
The Eshkol Regional Council announced on Sunday that the IDF had informed them that the service outages were not caused by any of their operations. The council stated that the outage was likely caused by Egyptian operations within Egyptian territory that were spilling over into Israel.
The Eshkol Regional Council is located at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. It is unclear if areas closer to the Egyptian border are experiencing similar issues.
In 2018, a similar incident occurred, causing Gaza border communities to lose cellular connection for weeks on end, according to Channel 12 news.
At the time, security officials stated that the outage was caused by electronic warfare by the Egyptian army in which they masked Egyptian cellular networks aimed at fighting explosive drones used by ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula. The electronic warfare leaked into Israel and caused cellular service outages in southern Israel.
According to Globes, a business daily, the operations in 2018 directly brought down Israeli cellular towers near the Egypt-Israel border. About 300,000 Israelis lost cellular service along the Egyptian border. The business daily stressed that the outage was not caused by masking operations by the Egyptian army on Egyptian networks, rather the Egyptian army was directly trying to drop Israeli networks. The Israeli government knew that this was occurring and did not respond, according to Globes.
Government officials told Globes that the Egyptian army feared that ISIS terrorists were using Israeli SIM cards to make it more difficult for Egypt to block their signals. The Egyptian operations sometimes caused service disruptions as far north as Jerusalem and Haifa.
Residents of Gaza border communities warned in 2018 that the outage could harm security in the area. At one point during the outage, farming equipment was stolen and soldiers in the area failed to call for help to stop the theft due to the service outage.
In another incident during the 2018 outage, residents heard explosions as two Palestinians attempted to infiltrate over the Gaza border fence, but couldn't receive security updates that officials tried to send due to the outage, according to Channel 13. A resident of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha near the Gaza border stressed that "If we had needed to enter secure places or to order an ambulance, it could have ended differently."