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.

Seven years ago, Saed Hasan, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, established a services and application development company named SADA. The company, located in Ramallah, currently has a staff of 12. Hasan himself is an electronics engineer who acquired his education and academic degree at the University of Jordan. Following graduation, he worked in a series of local information technology companies until he decided it was time to go independent and became his own boss, “to make a change in this field, and also, to make some money,” he said.

SADA has a number of major customers, among them Ericsson Jordan, as well as some Palestinian cellular companies. “However,” Hasan admits, “we could do much more than that.” He dreams of expanding into Israel of all places. “We are neighbors,” he said. “We live next to each other. You need our services, and we can provide them.”