AI regulation in Palestine (2026)

In 2021 the Palestinian Council of Ministers formed a national AI team, headed by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Economy with government, academic and private-sector members; it produced a National AI Strategy launched in 2023 covering government modernization, sectoral development, legal framework and capacity building.

There is no comprehensive or sector-specific AI statute in force. The strategy itself only calls for building a legal framework addressing human rights, monitoring, liability, fairness, accountability and transparency — work that is still planned, not enacted.

The strategy's first phase targets AI in transportation, energy, agriculture, environment, water management, healthcare, Arabic-language processing, economic planning, manufacturing, smart infrastructure, tourism and cybersecurity, plus integration into government services.

Palestine engaged with UNESCO's ethics-of-AI framework, using the Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) to gauge preparedness for ethical/responsible AI, and was among the pilot countries for the Global Index on Responsible AI completed in September 2023.

A supporting personal-data-protection legal foundation is not settled: civil-society body 7amleh analyzed a Personal Data Protection draft law-by-decree from a human-rights perspective, indicating the privacy framework underpinning AND AI accountability remains at the draft stage.

Implementation is nascent — governance bodies, draft instruments, pilot programs in education and data infrastructure, and university AI/robotics programs — but institutionalization is described as still in early stages, with no enforcement regime.