Palestine’s National Development Plan: Resilience, Disengagement, and Cluster Development towards Independence (NDP 2021-2023).

The National Development Plan (NDP 2021-2023) is a multisectoral document introducing a new development vision. Cluster development within this plan is built on progressive welfare. It aims to maximize the use of national human and financial potential and resources while ensuring balanced development among the governorates. The upcoming phase of resistance against division and fragmentation will be based on the unity of land, people, political system, and security establishment. It will be premised on one legitimacy and one law. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country must adapt, prepare, plan, and implement effective and efficient responses to the needs of affected citizens. This includes continuing to provide basic government services, such as essential health services, and implementing the Economic Recovery Plan in the short and medium terms.
The Plan's targets are (i) Promoting National Products and Global Engagement. This involves promoting and supporting national products to be competitive and provide viable alternatives. It also entails openness to the global market and improving the depth and breadth of relations with the Arab region; (ii) Modifying the Palestinian Economic Model. This modification hinges on shifting educational outcomes, transforming the nature of business, and expanding employment opportunities; (iii) Supporting Palestinian Resilience and Human Resources. The development process will support Palestinians' resilience on their land and make better use of human resources, both within Palestine and among the diaspora; (iv) Consolidating National Unity and Social Justice. Development will further promote the role of youth, empower women, and achieve equality and social justice. By launching the NDP 2021-2023, the government aims to promote industrial, agricultural, and tourism production, reduce unemployment, fight poverty, and enhance the role of women and youth. The government will also increase interest in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), uphold public rights, bolster transparency, strengthen and construct industrial parks, and create development-oriented entrepreneurial ventures, start-ups, and technology and business incubators. Furthermore, the government will work to promote investment in clean energy, pay attention to water sources, and lay the groundwork for national collective action to strengthen the resilience of citizens by improving health, education, economy, social protection, and other basic services critical to people's lives.
Cluster development involves the bundling of Palestinian geographies, including relevant economic, institutional, educational and other activities, into interlinked clusters to achieve the overall national goal. Everybody contributes to realising this goal, with the participation of all development partners, namely, the government, local government units (LGU), private and civil sector, universities, and the donor community. Cluster planning can contribute to improving the macro economy by leveraging the competitive advantage of each of the governorates and optimizing these advantages in economic terms. In this way, every governorate has a cluster that focuses on its characteristics and dominant economic activity, developing, building on, and producing the needed cumulative impact to achieve development. Jerusalem comprises the Capital Cluster. The Jenin and Qalqiliya governorates are renowned for agriculture, as Hebron and Nablus are for their industry. While Bethlehem is specialized in tourism, Gaza is centered on everything that relates to the sea, marine science, fisheries, fishing industry, and seawater desalination. Ramallah and El-Bireh are a financial, service, and information and communications technology (ICT) hub.
Some key sectors are identified in the document as crucial for national development. These include (i) Ensuring a Sustainable Environment with Policy interventions aiming to reduce and effectively control pollution, adapt to climate change and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, promote integrated solid and hazardous waste management and recycling, expand wastewater management, treatment, and reuse, manage, protect, and promote sustainable use and conservation of natural resources (land, water, and energy), conserve biodiversity, establish nature reserves, and expand green spaces, and increase reliance on renewable energy; (ii) Revitalizing Agriculture and Strengthening Rural Communities with Policy interventions focusing on increasing agricultural (plant and livestock) production and developing value chains, protecting and supporting farmers, particularly small-scale farmers in threatened and marginalized areas, developing and implementing agriculture clusters to foster self-reliance and disengagement from occupation, and strengthening the competitiveness of agricultural products; (iii) Preserving National Identity and Cultural Heritage Based on the Palestinian Narrative with Policy interventions designed to support cultural innovation and production, and nurture talented individuals, implement initiatives to preserve and develop Palestine's cultural heritage, develop traditional cultural and tourism handicrafts, rehabilitate, develop, and promote cultural and religious heritage sites as tourist destinations, develop and implement tourism clusters to foster self-reliance and disengagement from occupation, and promote Palestine as a tourist destination.