How did the Palestinian Authority get telephone and Internet codes like a country?
How did the Palestinian Authority get their own telephone country code, a powerful symbol of independence in the modern world? As a direct result of the Oslo Accords, Israel gave the newly formed Palestinian Authority (PA) limited autonomy over certain territories. Israel and the PA worked on many technical issues that were intended to help create the infrastructure of a modern state, such as telecommunications. In the spirit of Oslo, Israel was a co-sponsor of International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Resolution 32 of the Plenipotentiary Conference (Kyoto, 1994) on Technical Assistance to the Palestinian Authority for the Development of Telecommunications. The ITU is an international treaty organization that is a ‘specialized agency’ of the UN with its own governing body. Even though the PA did not follow through on the most important commitments of the peace process — involving Israel’s security — the momentum of these agreements carried the PA forward toward statehood. Many ant
