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Satellite jamming plagues Lebanon |
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 Scrambling of satellite television signals across Lebanon and Israel has been attributed to UNIFIL vessels patrolling the coast of Lebanon. After vague initial speculations blaming foreign intelligence activity, Agence France-Presse and the Jerusalem Post recently reported the source of interference as a radar device aboard the Dutch UNIFIL vessel HNLMS De Ruyter.
An Israeli government investigation – launched at the urging of YES, Israel’s sole satellite provider – identified the Dutch vessel as the source of satellite disruptions. YES has reportedly suffered near-bankruptcy due to many customers abandoning the service after over a month of unwatchable television. Israeli officials have “approached people in charge of the international peace-keeping mission in New York,” Israel’s Foreign Minister spokesman Mark Regev told Agence France-Press, “and communications specialists will work on the issue.”
The interference began to freeze and scramble on-screen images on September 6 – the day of Israel’s air strike in Syria – causing much guess work as to a possible link between the incidents. But the problem seemed isolated to Lebanon and Israel, as viewers in Syria and Jordan watched their favorite programs with no interruption throughout the prime television season of Ramadan.
Jordan’s Audio-Visual Commission indicated that it has not received complaints about television signal disruptions. In Syria, the Ministry of Telecommunications is investigating the interference, but is yet to publicly comment. The Ministry’s Information Officer, Fadia Suleiman, told MEB Journal that she has not personally seen image distortions on television, but that the Ministry has convened a group to look into the matter.
In Lebanon, Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh publicly acknowledged the satellite disruptions in early September. The Ministry notified cable providers across the country of “a problem stemming from territorial waters,” as Maroun Hani Al-Fahel of cable company Econet told MEB Journal.
 “What we know is that it is from the sea, not the air,” said Al-Fahel, “because there is no interference in the Bekaa,” an inland valley in East Lebanon. Econet and other cable providers in the country have received “countless and endless” phone calls from subscribers about the onscreen disruptions, said Al-Fahel.
On October 20, the problem had died down, but Hamadeh told local radio station Voice of Lebanon that the Ministry's had concluded that the interference was due mainly to “the radars of ships at sea.” He said two other sources may also be causing the problem: Israeli spy aircrafts, and jamming by security forces on the ground in Lebanon. According to Hamadeh, the local jamming is part of Lebanon’s high-alert national security status, heightened again ahead of November’s presidential elections.
On October 29, the Jerusalem Post issued an article that quoted a “senior official from the Netherlands” saying the Dutch “were 100 percent not responsible” for the satellite jamming.
Following this twist, the office of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Post that it was “unfamiliar” with their new findings and thus “unwilling to issue a clarification.” The Post again approached Dutch officials, who said they were “surprised by the response, since the Netherlands had immediately transferred the new findings to Barak’s office.” |
