Continent Asia NSN length 8 or 9 | Type closed Country calling code +970 or +972 | |
Regulator Israeli Ministry of Communications Membership Palestinian Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology | ||
For Palestine the Country Code +970 is reserved.
Contents
- International
- North West Bank
- Central West Bank
- South West Bank
- Gaza Strip
- Cellular
- Services
- Toll
- References
This code is mainly used when calling from Arab countries to places under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (including the Gaza Strip). The telecommunication system in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is considerably dependent on the Israeli infrastructure, therefore, from most countries, dialing +972 would often be the better option to access phone numbers in the Palestinian territories. In some cases, when the number was allocated directly by an Israeli company, this would be the only option. However, from many Arab or Muslim countries that block the Israeli access code, dialing 970 is the only option to access the Palestinian telecommunication system. Syria is currently the only country that blocks both 972 and 970 access codes. Lebanon lifted the ban on the 970 code in July 2008 but still blocks the 972 code.
Palestinians use the Israeli telecommunication infrastructure either directly or through the Palestinian Paltel company, which allocates numbers reserved for it by the Israeli Ministry of Communication. The 059 prefix is reserved exclusively for the Palestinian Jawwal cellular communication company (a subsidiary of Paltel), and the 056 prefix is similarly reserved for the Wataniya Telecom company. Note that these prefixes had been used in the past as Israeli internal dialing prefixes, but were replaced or merged with other dialing codes, and reintroduced for the exclusive use of the Palestinian telecommunication system.