Sign up here to receive Bellingcat’s biggest investigations by email as soon as they are published. Become a member and support our work here.
Imagery captured by the European Space Agency’s freely available Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellites appears to be delayed over Gaza and parts of the West Bank, a Bellingcat analysis has found.
While the delay remains relatively short at just 24 hours, this can still impact the speed at which analysts and researchers can observe what is happening in the region.
For example, the Israeli Defence Forces demolished homes in the West Bank Palestinian city of Hebron in recent days. New imagery captured on October 26, which included Hebron, would allow open source researchers to quickly confirm the demolitions, assess the impacted area and observe any unreported IDF activity. But imagery for the western half of Hebron was not available until October 27 due to the Sentinel-2 delay, inhibiting real-time fact-checking and reporting on this evolving situation.
A spokesperson for the European Union told Bellingcat that the delay was not related to events in Gaza but to “mitigate possible threats” due to the war in the Middle East “including Iran’s attacks on its neighbours and possible threats to European interests”. The delayed region of Sentinel tiles that cover Gaza as well as parts of Israel and the West Bank also extends over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The European Union ordered a 24-hour delay on Sentinel satellite imagery over the Gulf of Oman earlier this year during US and Israeli strikes on Iran. However the delay impacting Gaza and parts of the West Bank has not been announced or previously reported.
“Such decisions are taken unanimously by all EU Member states and will stay in place as long as necessary,” the spokesperson said. They also said that while the Copernicus program, which includes the Sentinel satellites, operated a free and open data policy there were limitations to this for security.
When asked if the delay, which began in late March, was related to the presence of US vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean or if there were other areas of delay, the spokesperson said they had no further comment.
Sentinel Delays
The Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellites provide an invaluable source of imagery for open source researchers. This has been especially true this year, as commercial satellite imagery providers restricted access to imagery in the Middle East, including areas of active human rights concern, such as Gaza.
However, in July, the European Union published Council Decision 2026/1716, which ordered a 24-hour delay on Sentinel imagery over the Gulf of Oman, after a request from the US government which was involved in strikes on Iran at that time.
Just two weeks later, the European Union issued a corrigendum that unpublished decision 2026/1716 and removed it from the Council of the European Union record, although satellite data shows the delay has remained.
This decision, while it was available, was reportedly the first public notification of delayed Sentinel imagery. Yet it was not the first time that Sentinel imagery has been restricted, analysis shows. Bellingcat found four distinct regions of delayed satellite imagery during 2025 and 2026: the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden/western Arabian Sea, the Red Sea as well as the previously unreported delay in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and parts of Israel, the West Bank and the entirety of Gaza.
Bellingcat’s analysis shows that these delays have been implemented in stages. Twenty-four hour delays of Sentinel-2 imagery were first observed by open source researchers in March and April 2025 after the US launched a naval and air strike campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The previously unreported imagery delay in the Eastern Mediterranean began on March 28, 2026, the same month that commercial American space imaging company Planet Labs also restricted imagery across the Middle East. The Gulf of Oman delay began on July 15, 2026, two days after the publication of Council Decision 2026/1716.
Decision 2026/1716 also specified that the delay be implemented for both Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 radar imagery. Bellingcat’s analysis of Sentinel-1 image availability shows that this is the case for both the Gulf of Oman region and the unreported region over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. However, the 2025 restrictions on Sentinel-2 imagery in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are not implemented in Sentinel-1.
Sentinel-1 imagery uses “synthetic aperture radar” to capture lower resolution radar images that can collect data at night and on cloudy days. This differs from Sentinel-2, which captures optical satellite imagery at higher resolution.
A Tale of Two Tiles
Sentinel satellite imagery is most commonly accessed by open source researchers through Copernicus Browser, a free online platform, but it is also distributed as large tiled files in the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem. These tiles are numbered using the Military Grid Reference System, and can be listed using APIs that provide information on each tile, including the capture and publication time. By comparing the capture and publication time, the publication delay can be computed.
For example, the catalog information for the tile T36RXV, which includes Gaza and portions of the West Bank, Negev and Egypt, provides the following metadata for the October 21, 2026 capture.
This shows that while the image was captured at 08:20 UTC on October 21, it was not published until 10:09 UTC on October 22 — almost 26 hours later. This is in contrast to the neighboring tile T36RYV, which includes parts of the West Bank, Israel, and Jordan. API data for this tile shows that the image was published at 12:10 UTC on October 21, just under four hours after the capture time.
This difference is not unique to this date either. Bellingcat’s analysis shows that this tile has been consistently delayed by one day since March 28, 2026.
This method can be extended further, and by analysing every tile with valid publication date timestamps, Bellingcat identified all global Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 delays since 2023. The only consistent delays visible were those identified in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden/western Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean in 2025 and 2026.
Impact on open source investigations
While the 24-hour delay on certain Sentinel imagery is a less severe restriction than other satellite providers have imposed, it can still impact the open source research process in fast moving situations. This is especially so in recent months as the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite data has emerged as a refuge as other satellite data is censored.
The image below shows how imagery for the eastern half of Hebron was visible on October 26, but not the western half where demolitions took place earlier this week.
The shape of the missing tiles can be seen by zooming out within the Copernicus browser, demonstrating how imagery of Gaza and other parts of Israel and the West Bank are also delayed.
Sentinel imagery covering western Hebron after the demolitions took place was published on October 27. However, the delay prevented local reports from being verified with satellite imagery while the situation was still ongoing.
Some Sentinel-2 users have previously described the challenges of covering fast-moving issues in the Gulf of Oman when the Sentinel delay was announced in March.
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here, Instagram here, Reddit here and YouTube here.
