Palestine signs the Digital Cooperation Organization's charter at LEAP 2026

The State of Palestine signed the charter of the Digital Cooperation Organization on the sidelines of LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, the Riyadh-headquartered intergovernmental body announced, becoming a signatory member of an organisation built to coordinate digital economy policy among its member states. The charter was formally handed over by Palestine's Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Economy, Dr. Abdel-Razzak Natsheh, to DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya. Natsheh said joining the DCO gives Palestine an opportunity to deepen international digital cooperation and accelerate its own digital transformation — a statement of intent rather than a description of a specific programme. Palestinian officials also framed the moment around what they called a Digital Prosperity Plan, though the substance of that plan — its scope, funding or timeline — was not detailed in the coverage of the signing, and it is not clear how it relates mechanically to DCO membership beyond the shared timing at LEAP. The Digital Cooperation Organization was established in 2020 by Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to promote digital economy growth among its members, and has expanded steadily since. The DCO describes Palestine's accession as taking membership toward 24 countries collectively representing roughly 980 million people, once accession procedures are completed — a scale increase that reflects a run of recent accessions rather than Palestine's signing alone, since the organisation's founding membership was five states. The DCO's own figures on Palestine's technology sector give some sense of what accession is meant to plug into. The organisation cites around 400 active ICT establishments in Palestine, employing more than 13,500 specialists, generating upwards of $500 million in annual value added and contributing close to 5 percent of the territory's GDP — a sector the DCO frames as positioned to benefit from the market access, policy coordination and capacity-building programmes membership is meant to provide. Membership carries no direct funding commitment attached to the signing itself. It is an accession to a charter governing cooperation on digital economy policy, standards and joint programmes among member states, not a grant or an investment. What Palestine gains in practice depends on which of the DCO's existing tracks — on digital trade, SME support, cybersecurity capacity-building and similar programmes — it goes on to actually participate in, none of which were detailed in connection with this signing. The accession is one of several moments at LEAP 2026 where Saudi Arabia positioned itself as a convener of regional digital cooperation rather than only a market for technology deals. Saudi Arabia's National Cybersecurity Authority signed its own bilateral cooperation agreement with Pakistan's telecoms ministry at the same event , and the DCO itself co-launched an open AI developer ecosystem with AMD and Saudi Arabia's communications ministry earlier in the show , alongside the Kingdom's own push to attract AI infrastructure investment through vehicles like the AWS-HUMAIN AI Zone . Palestine's accession adds a member rather than a commercial deal, but it extends the same pattern: Riyadh's technology week is increasingly where intergovernmental digital-policy business gets transacted, not only where vendors show products. The reported jump in DCO membership, from 16 to 24 countries, is worth treating as a headline figure pending confirmation of exactly which accessions it covers and over what period, since Palestine's signing alone would not account for an increase of that size. TechScoop is reporting from LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.