Israel, Palestinians cooperate on Gaza Internet service

For two days hostilities ceased along a half kilometer stretch of the Gaza fence as Israelis and Palestinians jointly toiled to provide the strip with its first high speed internet service.

It will take another two weeks for the service to be up and running, said Maj. Adam Avidan who heads the foreign relations department for the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration to the Gaza Strip.

“It will allow Gazans to connect to the world, and hopefully to peace,” he said.

But laying 15 new lines of optical cables onto an already existing 40 kilometer stretch, is not an easy task in an area that faces an almost daily barrage of mortars and kassam rockets from Gaza, he said.

For 10 hours on Wednesday and again on Thursday, workers wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets drilled and dug into the ground to lay the infrastructure the optic fibers.