Verizon Wireless is one of the largest mobile phone providers in the US. If you want to send a text message via Verizon, you go to this page, which lists the countries they serve and access codes.
‘Palestine’ is listed as a country (though it isn’t), and guess which Mideast democracy on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean is not listed under ‘I’?
Here’s the page in ‘map view’, where it’s even clearer that ‘Palestine’ — including a flag! — supplanted the State of Israel:
It seems Verizon has an arrangement with ‘Palcell’, a Palestinian cellular carrier, but none with any of the Israeli carriers. Curious…
UPDATE: Last April, Verizon Wireless responded to customer complaints about this very same issue, but with marketing material for its general international calling. See article from The Jewish Week (req. reg.).
That problem has been solved, but the text messaging material remains as is.
UPDATE, 2/14: Verizon has corrected the page we addressed here.
