Telephone numbers in the State of Palestine

Telephone numbers in the State of Palestine

Palestine show in (dark green) and dispute territory show in (light green)
Location
Country	the State of Palestine
Continent	Asia
Regulator	Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology
Membership	Palestinian Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology
Type	closed
NSN length	8 or 9
Access codes
Country code	+970
International access	00
Long-distance	0

The country calling code +970 is reserved for telephone numbers in the State of Palestine.

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.^[1]

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 Communications. 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.