Israel has experienced some of the most unusual internet disruption patterns in the world — from infrastructure attacks to wartime connectivity drops. Whether you are trying to reach Walla, check your bank, or load a government portal on gov.il, knowing whether a site is down for everyone or just for you can save you a lot of frustration.
Why Israeli websites go down more than you might expect
Israel's internet backbone is concentrated through a small number of major providers: Bezeq (the national telco), HOT (cable), Partner, and Cellcom. When any of these has a routing issue, it can knock out connectivity for a significant portion of the country simultaneously. This is different from larger markets like the US, where dozens of competing ISPs create more redundancy.
Additionally, geopolitical events periodically cause targeted disruptions — DDoS attacks on news sites, government portals, and financial services are well-documented during periods of regional tension.
How to check if a site is down in Israel
Go to WebsiteDown, enter the domain you are trying to reach, and click Check Status. The check is run from our infrastructure, completely independent of your ISP. If the site responds, the problem is on your end (try clearing DNS cache or switching to 8.8.8.8). If the check also fails, the site is genuinely down.
Most commonly checked Israeli services
The services Israelis most frequently check during outages are: Bezeq customer portal (bezeq.co.il), Walla news and email (walla.co.il), Bank Hapoalim online banking (bankhapoalim.co.il), Bank Leumi (leumi.co.il), gov.il government services, Ynet news (ynet.co.il), and HOT internet (hot.net.il). During major incidents all of these can be affected simultaneously if the disruption is at the ISP level.
What to do during a nationwide outage
If Bezeq or HOT is down, your home internet connection itself may be affected. Switch to mobile data (Partner or Cellcom) to keep checking status. The Bit payment app (bit.co.il) can fail independently from banking outages — it runs on a separate infrastructure. Government services on gov.il often have increased load during national events which causes slowdowns that look like outages but are actually overload.