Information Economies in Palestine Reality and Prospects

This study aims at pointing at a research sight can be described by new in the Arab aria in general and the Palestinian in specific. Where it throws light in what is known worldly information –based economy, which the study dealt with throw seeing the worldly special literature. The study lighted on the Palestinian knowledge– based society structure, which can be considered the original base, and the row material of the information based economies. The researcher built cluster showed the Palestinian primitive knowledge, which starts from the family passing the educational sector, the movement of the educational research and the technical development reaching the invention on which the worldly new economics based on. By studying the international literature which is used for limiting and measuring the size of information activities, a Palestinian suggested classification could be made throw which the information economics divided on its base in tow primitive information sector and the other its secondary. The primary information sector includes the information activities which produce value added and it includes all the workers in the establishments which produces or affords services with knowledgeable content, and these activities can be divided in to four main groups: The activities of producing knowledge, the activities of preparing knowledge, the activities of the main structures of knowledge. The secondary information sector includes the internal information activities which doesn’t curry the market price and doesn’t produce value added, and it concerns all the workers in all other sectors, and the economic activities like agriculture, industry and services and they work in activities with knowledgeable content. The size of the primary information sector was estimated by separating the primary information economic activities from the other economic sectors in West Bank and Gaza stripe. And the result was that the value-added rates of the primary information sector to the gross Palestinian economic value added, reached in the years (1999-2002) (7.6%, 8.2%, 11.2%, and 12.1%) in succession. And the rate of the workers in the primary information sector, to the size of gross work force of the same period was (8.8%, 8.9%, 10.5%, and 12.5%) in succession. Concerning the secondary information sector, it was not estimated precisely because of having no enough data and the difficulty of separating the dissolved secondary information activities in the economic industrial and agricultural and service sectors from the main sectors, which needs an available detailed statistics and data. So, the size of the sector was estimated throw finding the worldly general average of the rate of the size of the secondary information sector, to the size of the primary information sector, which reached (78%), the estimation of the study of the gross of the Palestinian information sector size of the years (1999-2002) was (13.5%, 14.6%, 19.9%, 21.5%) in succession, in grade of annual growth nearly (17%). Concerning the communication information technology sector (ICT), -which represents the most developed information activities, and the most effective in the worldly economics- its separated from the Palestinian information sector and the estimation of it size with comparing the growth average with some economic sectors, and it appeared that the size of the sector is still small in the worldly measures, where the value added of the (ICT) activities formed (3%) from gross domestic production in the year 2002, with annual increase average considered the highest among the other economic sectors in the period (1999-2002) which reached (30%) while the workers in these activities formed 0.45% of the whole Palestinian work forces in the year 2002 by an annual increasing average considered the minimum among the other economic sectors in the same period which reached (4%) It is stated that the (ICT) sector in Palestine is mostly consumptive, and hardly has productive activities, except few software industries. But it achieved the highest average of the worker productivity with an observed difference from the other study sectors. Finally, we can say that the Palestinian condition is in argent need to activate the information knowledgeable activities, and insuring the knowledge society understanding in the public and governmental establishment, with increasing the interests of the (ICT) sector as it is the more able economic sector to overcome the changeable political economic circumstances which the Palestinian society lived and still lives with the necessity of insuring on the roll of the research scientific establishments in creating effective widespread Palestinian economy.