Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
| ||||||||||||
Palestinians About to Get an Area Code of Their Own Palestinians About to Get an Area Code of Their Own
By William A. Orme Jr
The New York Times January 23, 1999 In a step toward virtual statehood Palestinians are about to be granted a form of long-distance independence, their own country code for international telephone calls.
Over Israeli objections, the International Telecommunications Union quietly announced this month that area code 970 had been reserved for the Palestinian National Authority territory in the West Bank and Gaza. The union, a United Nations affiliate in Geneva, agreed in principle to give Palestinians a code at its membership meeting in November.
"We saw this as a very important decision for us," Imad Falouji, Telecommunications Minister for the Palestinian Authority, said when he received word of the decision this week. "It meant that all of these countries are supporting us."
Before the agency formally assigns the code and it is put into use, the Palestinians have to meet additional legal and technical requirements. Those include installing new switching systems and rerouting local telephone numbers. Mr. Falouji said that could be done in two or three months.
'This will give us an independent gateway to all the countries of the world," said Hatem Halawani, president of the Palestine Telecommunications Company, the Palestine Authority's telephone monopoly. "This is going to make communications much better and easier for the Palestinian people."
Over five years the authority has gradually acquired some of the trappings of sovereignty, a flag, overseas embassies, a widely accepted passport and a gleaming new international airport. But an international dialing code is perhaps an even more potent modern symbol of self-determination. The code will tacitly bestow global recognition on the self-governed territories, or so fears Israel, which unsuccessfully argued that country codes should be reserved for United Nations member states.
The Palestinians countered that two nonmembers, Hong Kong and Taiwan, had codes, as do several multinational telecommunications companies like Iridium and Global Star.
The 130,000 telephone lines registered in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are called from abroad using the Israeli 972 area code, a system that the Palestinians have found objectionable on philosophical and practical grounds.
"It is symbolic, but not only symbolic," Mr. Halawani said. "When you have a direct connection without an intermediary, it is a big advantage."
By agreement with Israel, Palestinian Telecommunications receives the revenue from international calls that originate in areas under Palestinian control but routes the calls through a contract with Golden Lines, one of three private long-distance companies in Israel.Having its own code and switching equipment would open the way to revenue-sharing deals and technological partnerships with other countries and international telecommunications companies, industry analysts said.
The International Telecommunications Union governs the global allocation and regulation of area codes, broadcast frequencies, Internet bandwidths and satellite signals. It voted to give what it called Palestine its own country code, as well as its own radio call signs and broadcast-frequency assignments.
The Israeli delegation formally objected, contending that the move violated the Oslo peace pact of 1995, which calls for the Palestinians and Israel to negotiate changes in telephone codes and broadcast frequencies, and the Wye River Memorandum of last year, which bans unspecified "unilateral actions" that affect the "status" of the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis called the Palestinian request for a country code "strictly politically motivated, as it lacks any genuine technical or otherwise objective justification." But the Palestinians prevailed, contending that four years of intermittent talks with Israel had not led to substantive progress.
Officials of the International Telecommunications Union cautioned that the Palestinians had "some work to do" before the new code starts. "They need a switch and a numbering plan, and at the moment they don't have either," said Francine Lambert, chief spokesman for the agency.
The Palestinians said the remaining obstacles were financial and technical, not political. Arab countries have agreed to direct calls from their state telephone companies to the new code, Mr. Falouji said. The Israelis, however, continue to contend that a country code can be introduced only with their assent, as part of the broader peace effort.'
"They still have to go through us," said Izzy Tapoohi, chairman of the board of Bezeq, the state-owned telephone company here.
Without Bezeq's technical cooperation, the changeover could be difficult.
More Articles on Emerging States
