IANA Approves .ps Top-Level Domain for Palestine

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority has granted the .ps country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Palestine. Three years ago, in 1997, IANA received a request to reserve the ccTLD, but declined because PS did not appear in the official ISO 3166-1 list of two-letter country codes, which correspond to the ccTLD's.

About a year later, IANA assigned the second-level domain .palestine.int, based on the fact that Palestine was recognized as a Permanent Observer at the United Nations.

Finally, in 1999, ISO added PS to the ISO 3166 list, designated as "Palestinian Territory, Occupied". Now IANA has approved the .ps ccTLD, and life for the Palestinians is beautiful.

This decision does not mean that IANA thinks Palestine is a country; indeed, the fact that IANA delegates the authority of deciding who is a country to ISO reflects this. In fact, there are several other ccTLD's assigned for regions that are not otherwise recognized as countries, Puerto Rico and Antarctica among them.

The question: how long before Israel contests this ccTLD assignment, or at least blocks it from their networks?