IF the Internet was once Gaza's window to the world, that window has now slammed shut and the strip's nascent tech industry has gone from incubator to grave in six weeks of all-out war.
Some of its brightest brains have died in the punishing Israeli bombardment, much of the strip's fledgling digital infrastructure has been destroyed, and hope for a better future obliterated.
Many fear local, tech-savvy talent will also rush for the door.
"(The tech sector) was the fastest growing portion of the economy and really one that Gazans can... rely on," said Ryan Sturgill, who worked in Gaza's tech sector and now advises companies in the region.
"This is the first time that the Internet has ever been really destroyed. In the previous wars over the years, it never went down."
Before Oct 7, the tech industry — young and whip-smart — had offered promise for many Palestinians, fostering investment, jobs and a brighter future far beyond their small and isolated homeland.
No longer. The Hamas raid prompted Israel to invade Gaza to annihilate the movement that has ruled there since 2007.
Gaza's Hamas-run government said at least 13,300 Palestinians were killed in a bombardment that had turned much of the territory, especially its north, into a wasteland.
Last month, Palestinian tech worker and innovation champion Tariq Thabet joined their ranks when he was killed along with 15 members of his family in a suspected air strike on their Gaza apartment.
He was a manager at UCAS Technology Incubator, an innovation hub that was set up in 2010 to mentor Gazan tech talent and support budding entrepreneurs.
"He was a pillar of the tech community," Dalia Shurrab, a one-time colleague who left Gaza for Jordan in 2021, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"The (tech) sector lost a man... who helped thousands of young men (and women) come up with ideas and transform them into website and mobile applications," the 41-year-old said.
His death deprived the strip of a true talent, Sturgill said. The bombing was also destroying key tech infrastructure, he said, along with Gaza's universities and precious human capital.
The strip's tech sector had been growing at a clip: a rare bright spot in what was a heavily constricted economy. Unemployment was high and opportunity low in a densely populated and heavily blockaded piece of land. Yet there were bright spots.
A Palestinian venture capitalist fund called Ibtikar — or innovation in Arabic — was set up by Palestinian executives in 2016 and had recently raised its second round of funding, a pot totalling US$30 million.
Ibtikar has funded 29 startups, spanning the businesses of motherhood and meditation, gaming and artificial intelligence.
According to a 2021 World Bank report, Palestinian tech and communications industries injected an extra US$500 million into the economy and accounted for some three per cent of gross domestic product.
Without connectivity, none of that growth and opportunity would have happened. And few see it happening again now.
"The (Israeli) siege started at the end of 2006, so the only window to the world for Gazans was the Internet," said Shurrab.
The World Bank report said Israeli restrictions on imports limited Gaza's network to 2G — far slower than successor generations — and described them as the "key constraint to improvements in digital infrastructure".
Other impediments were a lack of regulation and of competition, the bank said, which "delayed network connectivity within the Palestinian territories and with the rest of the world".
The tech sector not only connected the city to the outside world, but it also gave young people a place to learn new digital skills to find a job and make ends meet, Shurrab said.
Unemployment in Gaza was about 45 per cent in 2022, the Bank said.
Shurrab left Gaza in 2021 after more than a decade working with Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG), a tech initiative partly backed by Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company.
Since its launch in 2011, GSG has helped more than 50,000 people, GSG director Alan El-Kadhi said.
On average, its graduates made US$700 each month within a year — and those with technical skills, such as coding and data analytics, could earn an average of US$1,500 per month during the same period, Kadhi said.
The writers are from Reuters news agency