Developer guide: SMS to Israel — number formats, Hebrew encoding and sender ID rules
Sending SMS to Israel requires careful handling of local mobile number formats, which use a 10-digit structure starting with 05 and must be converted to E.164 format (+972) for international systems. Not all 05x prefixes are Israeli mobile numbers — only 050–055 and 058 are valid, while 056 and 059 belong to Palestinian networks. Messages containing even a single Hebrew character, emoji, or special punctuation switch the entire message from GSM-7 to UCS-2 encoding, cutting per-segment capacity from 160 to 70 characters and raising costs. Scheduling must account for Israel's Friday–Saturday weekend, Shabbat observance, and the Asia/Jerusalem time zone, whose daylight saving dates differ from Europe and the US. Israeli law also mandates prior consent, sender identification, and an opt-out mechanism for marketing messages, and delivery reports should be actively monitored rather than treating 'accepted' status as confirmed delivery.
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