.ps is the Internet country code top-level domain officially assigned to Palestine.It is administered by the Palestinian National Internet Naming Authority (PNINA).
Registrations are processed by certified registrars.
The Internationalized country code top-level domain for the State of Palestine is .فلسطين, which is represented as .xn--ygbi2ammx in Punycode.
History
The limits of telecommunications in Palestine Following the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian telecommunications sector was allowed to grow but under the condition of remaining under Israeli control for anything related to access to the wider world. Palestinian companies, namely Paltel, were forced to sign agreements with Israeli companies to access global communications networks.Faris, Samer. The Telecommunication Sector in Palestine: Legal v. Factual. In: Zureik, Elia, et al. "Information society in Palestine: the human capital dimension." (2006). Pages 19-20 (258-259 of the pdf)Oslo Accords, Annex III, article 36.D. Available at: Annex III, Concerning Civil Affairs, Israeli Palestinian Interim Agreement on The West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Oslo II) | PA-X
The power to veto the connection of Palestine to the wider communications system resulted in Israel opposing the access of Palestine to the International Telecommunication Union, on the legal pretext that Palestine was not a UN state.Ben-David, Anat. "National web histories at the fringe of the Web: Palestine, Kosovo, and the quest for online self-determination." The Historical Web and Digital Humanities (2019): 89-109.
It was only with the 1998 resolution 52/250 of the UNGA that the situation changed. The resolution allowed Palestine wider access to rights within the UN. On this basis, the ITU passed resolution 99, granting Palestine observer status.
Creation of the country code Similar issues as with the wider telecommunications sector plagued the Palestinian Authority's quest for a country code for the country. The Palestinian Authority made a first attempt in 1997. ICAAN rejected the request on the basis that Palestine was not among the UN-recognized countries and territories in the ISO 3166-1 list. As an interim solution, the second-level "Palestine.int" was used.
The situation changed in 1999, when, after two years of discussions, the United Nations Statistics Division told the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency that it had included "Occupied Palestinian Territory" on the UN list of Standard Country and Area Codes for Statistical Use. The agency thus announced that from 1 October 1999 it would add "ps" to the ISO 3166-1 list to designate "Occupied Palestinian Territory". The precedent of other non-independent territories, such as Puerto Rico or the Netherlands Antilles, was used to detach the decision to grant a country code from the official recognition of Palestine as a state. This opened the way for an application in 1999, which was then granted in 2000. Second level domains Registrations can be made at the second-level as well as at several third-level domain names:
.ps: open to anyone (not required to be Palestinian) com.ps, net.ps, org.ps: unrestricted edu.ps: Educational institutions. gov.ps: institutions of the PNA and government. sch.ps: Palestinian schools
Domain hacks
It has also been used in domain hacks, for example meetu.ps for meetups on the website Meetup, grou.ps, and by the University of Maryland as ter.ps (from "Terps", a nickname for the Maryland Terrapins).
References
External links nic.ps PNINA pnina.ps PNINA List of .ps registrars IANA .ps whois information