Israel’s ccTLD manager has announced that they’ll be launching a Hebrew IDN country code domain extension in 2022 – “.ישראל”
The .il country code currently has around 275 thousand domains under management, with the bulk of them in co.il.
The existing Latin ccTLD previously allowed for IDN registrations in Hebrew on the left of the dot, though they are no longer accepting registrations pending the launch of the IDN domain extension. Existing mixed IDN registrations have been grandfathered.
The new IDN ccTLD will allow registrations directly under it, unlike its Latin counterpart. As with other IDN country codes registrations will only be permitted using Hebrew characters on both sides of the dot. You won’t be able to register using Latin characters.
IDNs are available for many different scripts and languages, however there are still many software applications that do not support them fully which has made adoption a challenge. You can read more about this situation on the UASG site.
