I sometimes also carry an Iridium satellite phone, and I always travel with a power strip in case there aren’t enough outlets where I am. I try to keep my backpack light in Gaza. Other items — armor-plated flak jacket, Kevlar helmet, gas mask and spare filters, and a trauma kit — add lots of weight to my load.

Probably the most vital tech tool I carry is the lightest: a paper clip to switch SIM cards. I’ve been here less than a year and finally got a local number from the Palestinian provider Jawwal, which has good coverage across Gaza and can be quickly replenished at countless retail shops. For months I was managing with Israeli cell service near the border and a New York number that had decent coverage in Gaza City over the Wataniya network. But now I juggle the Gaza and New York phones depending on which has the stronger signal.

What tech tools do you use to navigate the language barrier in Hebrew and Arabic?

I depend way too heavily on Google Translate, both for work and in my personal life. For accurate translations I rely on an excellent support staff, but in scanning social media I routinely turn to automated translations — far more than I’d like.

My wife and I feel like captives of Google Translate in making sense of Hebrew-language messages on local WhatsApp groups, bank statements, utility bills and so on, but it is adequate, and it continues to improve — in particular through its camera interface. As iPhone, not Android, users, we look forward to the day when WhatsApp will let us translate within the app, rather than copying and pasting into the Translate app.

In part because of the confusion of the language barrier, but also because of the complexity of the beat, I record more phone calls in this job than I have in other assignments. TapeACall Pro makes that as simple as making a three-way call, and produces a recording seconds after I hang up. I also use TurboScan to send documents from my phone, and CamCard to scan the business cards of new contacts.