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Avner Halperin is a research fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, based at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Tarek Massoud Professor of Democracy and Governance at the Ford Foundation. Halperin, a tech entrepreneur focusing on the Palestinian economy, and his colleagues Mahmoud Khwes and Eli Sandler, an Israel policy fellow with a master’s degree in public policy at HKS, have proposed a new foundation – which they call the International Palestine Innovation Foundation. (GPI) – to boost the Palestinian technology sector. We asked Halperin about his research, his foundation, and how GPI can succeed where other efforts have failed.
Q: How did the idea for the GPI Foundation come about?
Halperin: I have been involved in high technology in the Middle East, especially in Israel, for the past 30 years. During that time, I worked on inclusion in high technology, thinking about how we engage a growing population. For example, my company, based in Israel, had a Palestinian R&D team working for us developing health software applications for the US market. When I left that company and had the opportunity to meet with the Middle East Initiative and Professor Tarek Massoud, we both thought it would be good to do some research on policies that enable the inclusion of high technology in the Middle East. We have seen a lot of policy work in that area on the Israeli side. So, we took off for what we considered a real opportunity; Promoting the Palestinian technology sector, especially in the West Bank.
During my year as a researcher at HKS, I partnered with Palestinian fellow Mahmoud Khais and another HKS fellow, Eli Sandler, in the Middle East Initiative to develop GPI.
Q: Your new report notes that the lack of technological development in the Palestinian territories is not due to a lack of effort or financial support, but to a failure to create mutually beneficial partnerships and prepare participants for the global business arena. How does your plan address this?
Halperin: What we have proposed is a new policy initiative, which really focuses on building international business relationships and business partnerships. We took inspiration from the highly successful US policy initiative, the Bilateral Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation, which promoted Israel’s high-tech sector. The idea is to put money to work where we build bridges of cooperation between Palestinian businesses and the US entities and the Gulf entities.
Another critical gap is the lack of champions. If you want to build a tech ecosystem, especially from edge to edge, whether it’s in Israel or Taiwan, Singapore or Ireland, you can’t expect it to succeed on its own. You need someone to beat him.
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