… I thought that might be an attention-grabbing headline.
Facebook posters throughout Israel, including the author, are currently reporting a spate of calls emanating from Gaza and the PA areas.
I have not answered one but most report that doing so does nothing (in any event, it would be ill-advised to do so).
Psychological warfare (and PsychOps) have a long history in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have previously (and repeatedly) telephoned and sent SMS messages to scores of Israelis.
It’s a crude but effective intimidation tactic as receiving phone calls and SMS messages from a terror organization a few dozens of kilometers from your bedroom is, well, kind of disturbing.
As the usual threatening messages are not being left, my guess is that the phone calls are part of a network-mapping effort to verify active subscriber lines in advance of a future campaign.
This is partially why answering is a not so hot idea as — from my own robocalling efforts using CallFire — I know that answered contact attempts are tracked in the app and distinguished from non-answers. Presumably this functionality is universal across robocalling platforms.
If it were you (or more accurately, if you were a dialing algorithm trying to reach and intimidate as many people as possible) which set of contacts would you be more likely to try again?
They could be tied to something far less sinister, of course — such as a spam campaign by robo-marketers — but I’m not taking any chances.
Blocking blocks of numbers at the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) level (your cellphone provider) is technically preferable, but the following should at least stop the calls, well, from freaking you out any further.
1: Download and install Calls Blacklist Pro (Android)
There are many call blocking apps for Android, and individual number blocking is now built into the OS itself. For more advanced functionality, you’ll want to use a dedicated app, though, and this it the one that I favor.
2: Add Blacklist Patterns for PA Prefixes
There are three phone prefixes that you will want to block operated by cellular providers in the Palestinian Authority (PA) areas.
An asterisks denotes a wildcard.
| Prefix | Operator |
| +970 | International dialing code. Primarily used in the Gaza Strip. |
| +972056* | Cellphone numbers belonging to Wattaniya subscribers |
| +972059* | Cellphone numbers belonging to Jawwal subscribers |
The exact way means of creating blacklist patterns varies a little between blacklist apps, but in Blacklist Pro I was able to simply input the blocks by adding these prefixes as strings to block using “begins with”:
As shown above, this is now working to block these calls:
If you do business with contacts from these areas, who are subscribed to Wattaniya or Jawwal lines, you can simply add their numbers to a whitelist while still blocking all other numbers.
