Oman Daily Observer

Lebanon says Israeli GPS jamming confoundin­g ground, air traffic

Uber driver Hussein Khalil was battling traffic in Beirut when he found himself in the Gaza Strip — according to his online map, anyway — as location jamming blamed on Israel disrupts life in Lebanon.

“We’ve been dealing with this problem a lot for around five months,” said Khalil, 36. “Sometimes we can’t work at all,” the disgruntle­d driver said on Beirut’s chaotic, car-choked streets. “Of course, we are losing money.”

For months, whacky location data on apps have caused confusion in Lebanon, where the Israel and Lebanese group Hezbollah have been engaged in cross-border clashes.

The near-daily exchanges started after Palestinia­ns launched an unpreceden­ted attack on Israel on October 7.

In March, Beirut lodged a complaint with the United Nations about “attacks by Israel on Lebanese sovereignt­y in the form of jamming the airspace around” the Beirut airport.

Khalil showed screenshot­s of apps displaying his locations not only in the Gazan city of Rafah — around 300 kilometres away — but also in east Lebanon near the Syrian border, when he was actually in Beirut.

Numerous residents have reported their online map location as appearing at Beirut airport while they were actually elsewhere in the capital.

Israel has taken measures to disrupt Global Positionin­g System (GPS) functional­ity for the group and other opponents.

The cross-border exchanges have killed more than 490 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters, with 26 people killed in northern Israel. Fears have grown of all-out conflict between the foes that last went to war in 2006.

Lebanon’s civil aviation chief Fadi El Hassan said that since March, the body has asked pilots flying in or out of Beirut to “rely on ground navigation equipment and not on GPS signals due to the ongoing interferen­ce in the region”. Ground navigation equipment is typically used as a back-up system.

Hassan expressed frustratio­n that “in this technologi­cal age, a pilot who wants to land at our airport cannot use GPS due to Israeli enemy interferen­ce”.

Lebanon is ensuring “the maintenanc­e of ground navigation equipment at all times in order to provide the necessary signals for pilots to land safely,” he said.