The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that it would begin using its own postcodes, a move at easing parcel delivery in the countries as well as proving sovereignty.
International mail sent to or from the West Bank must currently pass through Jordan or Israel.
Postal packages can be seen at the post office in the West Bank city of al-Bireh in al-Bireh.
(Photo: AFP)
But the PA said on Sunday that it had asked the Universal Postal Union to notify its member states that Palestinian postcodes were coming into effect.
“From April, postal items that do not carry the Palestinian postcode will not be processed,” Palestinian Communications Minister Ishaq Sidr told reporters in Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority ‘s Western Bank.
“It is a question of asserting the rights of Palestine,” he said.
Palestinian postcodes would also help stop the capture of foreign cargo, Sidr said.
He said six tonnes of parcels had been maintained in Jordan since 2018, and accused Israel of obstructing delivery.
Ishaq Sidr, Palestinian Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology
(Photo: AFP)
The use of postcodes “will prevent Israel from seizing postal items arriving in Palestine, and help make services more efficient,” said Imad al-Tumayzi, head of international relations at ‘Palestine Post, to AFP.
“In 2020, we recorded more than 7,000 outages of postal equipment on the Israeli side, whether by opening parcels, capturing them or calling their owners for investigation,” he said.
Palestinians have complained that they have been forced to use expensive private courier services to send or receive parcels.
However, it was unclear whether the use of postcodes would cut postage costs.
Postal workers inspect a mail package at a post office in the Palestinian city of al-Bireh in the West Bank
(Photo: AFP)
The official PA news agency Wafa said postcodes had already been issued to about half a million properties in the West Bank.
They said they would soon be deployed to the Gaza Strip, under Israeli-Egyptian crackdown and under the control of Hamas Islamists.
In the West Bank, a Palestinian postal worker who asked not to be named said the new postcodes were “more symbolic than practical.”
“Postal coding cannot be implemented in practice when the Palestinian Authority controls ports or airports,” he said.
The West Bank, which is between Israel and Jordan, does not have an active civilian airport.