Posted on September 5, 2010 in Uncategorized

It appears that Comcast Cable and Verizon FIOS have blocked the DNS entry for the English version of Hamas’ news site.

With the Middle East Peace Talks getting underway, I thought it would be interesting to see how Hamas is characterizing the events surrounding the negotiations; so I tried accessing their semi-official news agency http://palestine-info.info/

The first thing that appears is a flash-based, language selection page, which displays fine. However, it seems that if one clicks “English” while using Verizon FIOS or Comcast Cable, a “page cannot be displayed” message appears.

Pinging/tracerting attempts are unable to resolve. Users on other ISPs trying to access the English page, have been successful. I got the IP address and was able to view the page using that.

The French language section also appears to be blocked.

Update: Qwest DSL may also be blocking the domain.

Update: While the ISPs were responsible for the improper DNS handling, it appears that the issue may have been caused by simple error, where the DNS records of the ISPs were not updated properly, which apparently is typical of the the laziness of large ISP’s. Therefore, it is prudent not to jump to any conclusions about the DNS issues possibly being the result of deliberate action or political motivation on the part of the ISPs in question. I apologize for the confusion that this may have caused. Thanks to all who helped.