Starlink will only operate in the Gaza Strip with the approval of Israel
thehill.com
thehill.com
"However, he admitted that he turned off internet access from his Starlink satellites during a Ukrainian raid last year on a Russian naval fleet."
This is horseshit. The geoblocks those the boats just careened in to were in place for a long time before, and limited to not allow access in Russia due to US sanctions! What Elon was asked to do, was to break the regulations his company is working beneath to create a major new offensive, against the then-current mindset of how US supplied Ukraine in long-term capabilities. Elon said explicitly that if it actually came through the proper channels, and not some random Ukrainian source, he would absolutely have made an exception and opened up those then-closed areas.
There's no clear evidence when the geoblock went into place, we only know the date the Ukrainians first tried to use it.
The geoblock included Ukrainian waters, so the sanctions argument can't be true
There's 0% chance for a location in as deep as Crimea that it wouldn't have been blocked at the time. Why keep pushing a wholly inverted view as if the blocks were somehow TURNED ON just as the Ukranian attack ships were moving in? The only thing one can reasonably think of being behind that skew is the persistent misinformation war against Musk as it not just goes against his word but common logic.
You make a plausible argument, but zero percent chance is a stretch.
> It's been written about how the Starlink geoblocks are quite notably _on_ the frontlines on ground,
Which are not the internationally recognized borders of Russia and not the sanctions boundary. So that claim by Musk you repeated earlier is clearly false.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/10/europe/ukraine-starlink-n... https://babel.ua/en/news/85349-ft-ukrainian-military-complai... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
You can easily find more. If you look at a general-use Starlink "geo-hex grid" you can quite easily see how it is capable of being blocked area-wise, and that has been in use since the very beginning, to avoid breaking laws, being used against the terms Ukraine has been given access for, etc.
Your second point wouldn't really even require a response. What were you thinking writing that? Like how in the hell does the official border even relate to this considering it's not the actual border the Russians limit themselves to?
> ? Like how in the hell does the official border even relate to this
You said "The geoblocks ... [are] limited to not allow access in Russia due to US sanctions!" US sanctions apply at the official border, so that can't have been the real reason.
No, you did. The guy's an engineer and a logical thinker, he doesn't dream up some bullshit explanations to fundamentally technical matters like the "white/blacklist" of hex squares and their default state.
You seem to have some really weird semantical thing you've getting attached to on the second "point". But in the end Russians aren't limited by their border, obviously Russians are deep in Ukraine, so to deny service to Russians, the blocks are done in areas where there are mostly / only Russians. Doing something else obviously would be counter-productive to satisfy the set requirements.
> You seem to have some really weird semantical thing ...
The semantics of what exactly is Russia and what is Ukraine turns out to be quite relevant in general to these issues.
I deem you're a Russian troll and move on.
AFAIK the only place where Starlink is operating illegally is Iran (where presumably Elon has no business interests that can be threatened).
Israel denies that they are occupying the strip, so it’s hard to say that even Israel is claiming it as legally theirs.
Not the government. Not the courts.
The Israeli government has, until the "disengagement", insisted in court regularly that Gaza was under belligerent occupation.
This was an important stance for them as claiming it as Israeli territory would give petitioners reasons to ask courts to apply Israeli civilian law. Israeli courts have accepted this stance many times over the years.
By claiming this, any annexation would be a war crime (but to be clear, Israel has never claimed to annex Gaza, on the contrary, Israel has claimed it has ended the occupation and given up control - a claim that is not uncontroversial given the level of control it still exerts)
[EDIT: And, unironically expect this deal and Karhi's statements to feature in future lawsuits as evidence that Gaza is still under belligerent occupation; this will matter greatly, especially now, as an occupying power has humanitarian legal responsibilities that can be challenged in Israeli courts if Israeli courts were to agree there is evidence Israel is still an occupying power]
So under which authority is Gaza legally part of Israel?
And any country where they don't have approval by the local spectrum operator.
Unsure if it's changed, but I know in South Africa Starlink connections are/were _technically_ illegal since it is an unlicensed telecoms connection. Basically unenforceable by practical means to stop consumers though, and some hardware importers advertise without issue.