Cyber escape Palestinians turn to Internet to cope with Israeli

DEHEISHE REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- Cooped up in their communities for most of the past three years of fighting, Palestinians have found a way to escape: going online.

Internet use has risen sharply, putting the Palestinians ahead of much of the Arab world. Business people use the Web to place orders with suppliers, university students keep up with lessons and relatives separated by Israeli closures stay in touch through chat rooms.

"People are using the Internet a lot more for practical reasons than their counterparts in other regions," said Maan Bseiso, owner of Palnet, the dominant Palestinian Internet service provider.

The Ibdaa Cultural Center, home to Deheishe's first computer center, typifies this electronic revolution. Teenagers and children come to the center to play games and communicate with friends in other camps.

Ultimately, people use the Internet to keep in touch with relatives in other countries -- or even nearby cities -- that they cannot easily reach, said Ziad Abbas, co-director of Ibdaa. Many have gone on to study at universities. One, 18-year-old Motasim Issa, is heading for Germany to study medicine.

"I learned how to throw a rock before I could read and write," says Abbas, 39. "We want the children to struggle for their rights, but they should learn other ways."

By Western standards, Internet use remains low in the Palestinian areas. The Madar Research Group, a research firm based in Dubai, says about 8 percent of Palestinians were online in September. In comparison, about 40 percent of Israeli households have Internet connections, according to the Ministry of Communications.

Still, the Palestinian numbers are ahead of such countries as Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, according to Madar. And the figures are much higher than they were before fighting broke out three years ago.

Mashhour Abudaka, vice chairman of the Palestinian chapter of the global Internet Society, said only 2 or 3 percent of Palestinians used the Internet before the uprising -- a three or four fold increase, far outpacing the increase in Internet use in most places during that period.

"That's a strong indication that people have used the Internet to break the siege," he said.

Palnet's Bseiso noted Internet use spikes during the most severe travel clampdowns by Israel.

The online learning program at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank provides one of the most dramatic examples of the importance of the Internet. The program, used by students who couldn't get to class, was launched in response to an Israeli incursion that followed a deadly suicide bombing in April 2002.

Travel restrictions threatened to cancel an entire semester, said Marwan Tarazi, director of the university's information technology unit. "The Internet was the way out."

By the next July, Bir Zeit had installed a rudimentary online learning system allowing students and professors to share notes, assignments and materials over the Internet.

"To get to where we are now would have taken a few years under normal circumstances," Tarazi said. "Ironically, need is the mother of invention."