Israel, UN negotiating on placing Elon Musk's Starlink in Gaza

Israel and the UN are negotiating the deployment of the Starlink communications system owned by billionaire Elon Musk in Gaza, according to a Wednesday report from Walla.

This is part of a plan to increase the security of UN aid workers in the Gaza Strip, three senior Israeli officials and a senior UN official said.

Senior Israeli officials said the Starlink system will provide satellite internet for the UN teams in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the organization's conditions for renewing the distribution of humanitarian aid.

However, Israel fears that the system could fall into the hands of Hamas, thus making it difficult for Israeli intelligence to monitor the media of the terrorist organization, which will increase the risk of coordinated terrorist attacks on IDF soldiers.

UN says Israel evacuation order 'wiped out' bid to improve Gaza aid

The UN last month reduced its activities in Gaza after its aid workers were in danger as a result of Israeli airstrikes and attacks by Palestinian terrorists. After the organization carried out a security assessment, it concluded that it had reached its limit when it came to the safety of its aid workers, which Walla reported is evident from the "sharp decrease in the amount of aid that reached needy Palestinians in Gaza."

A senior UN aid official said on Wednesday that an Israeli military evacuation order covering a third of the Gaza Strip has "wiped out" the United Nations' attempts to improve humanitarian aid deliveries via the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The Israeli government saw the UN decision to suspend the distribution of aid as a political move as a directive from senior UN officials to increase the pressure on Israel to end the war, Walla cited senior Israeli officials as saying. UN officials have denied such allegations. The Biden administration tried to mediate between the parties. According to senior American officials, it emphasized to Israel that the UN's security concerns are real and to begin working on a solution.

An Israeli official said the issue arose during Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's visit to Washington last week. Both UN and Israeli officials said that the defense minister had a phone conversation with the head of the UN security department, telling him that Israel is obligated to take steps to avoid attacks that would harm UN teams in Gaza. 

UN official Andrea De Domenico said that in the past few weeks, there had been a lot of discussions with Israel on how to improve the situation.

"We have been engineering a lot of solutions and trying and testing, improving and failing - at times - and now with this evacuation order, all this has been, again, wiped out," he told reporters on Wednesday.

De Domenico said alternative plans were now blocked by the evacuation order, but he hoped a protection agreement could be reached with the Israeli military for some areas.

"Would it be Starlink? Would it be another technology? I don't care as long as we have what we need to communicate safely with our teams for safety and operations," said De Domenico, referring to the SpaceX satellite internet service.

"Regarding the technology itself, I can't say it'll be Starlink or something else. I don't know yet, but we have to find something that we're comfortable with, which will also help them," said the Israeli defense official. "There are some security concerns regarding what Hamas can do with communications equipment."

Dujarric said the UN was "platform agnostic" and just wanted communications equipment that did not rely on cell phone towers because they were unreliable. He added: "Starlink gets a lot of headlines, but it's not about Starlink, it's about getting whatever equipment that works."

Actions Israel will take should Starlink plan go awry

Israeli officials said that Israel has asked the UN for guarantees about where the system will be located in Gaza, as well as about the ability to disable it remotely in case it is stolen.

The US encouraged Israel to agree to the UN's requests and urged them to give guarantees to the Israelis regarding the security of the system.

"With regard to some of the requests, Israel has legitimate security concerns, and what we are trying to do is to mediate to achieve an agreement that will give the UN the security they need but will also provide an answer to Israel's legitimate concerns," said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

Senior Israeli officials said the United Nations offered to send a team to Israel to demonstrate the system's purpose to technical experts from the security establishment. The team would show that the system can be disabled remotely and thus address the concerns of the Israeli security services.