In recent years, the Palestinian high-tech industry has experienced a boom that is hard to ignore. While two years ago, there were 112 high-tech companies in the West Bank, their number has grown since and these days stands at 146 and counting. A few of these companies are technology start-ups developing their own unique products, whereas most of them are developing various applications and providing services for large high-tech companies on an outsourcing basis.
The remarkably fast growth in this sphere is attributable, above all, to changing trends in Palestinian society. The younger and more sophisticated generation is not interested in agriculture, tourism or the stone industry, the major growth engines of the Palestinian economy in recent decades. Instead, they seek professional careers in modern, attractive and lucrative labor markets. Thus, every year no fewer than 2,000 graduates of Palestinian and other universities in the region – educated as engineers, hardware and software developers, quality assurance professionals, Internet experts and others — enter the labor market. They are all looking for work. Some find their place in existing companies, while the more enterprising among them set up independent companies of their own. Is the market large enough to accommodate all of them? Not necessarily.
