Isam Ishaq

Technical Director

Isam Ishaq is an Internet pioneer in Palestine. In 1995 he helped establish the Palestinian Academic Network (PLANET), which was the first Palestinian Organization to offer full Internet services.

Isam has been developing websites since about 30 years. In 1994, while still a student at the TU Berlin, he recognized the lack of Arabic content on the Internet and published the Arabic Software Map. This website was first attempt on the Internet to collect and organize information on Arabic related software, standards and more for all platforms. At that time none of the existing web browsers was able to display Arabic content. Thus, he wrote the site in LaTeX and translated into HTML using the LaTeX2HTML translator, which generated HTML pages that include the Arabic texts as images. Although he stopped maintaining this website in 1996, for more than a decade, this website was a reference for anyone interested in developing Arabic Software or websites. The website does not exist any more, but archived copies of it are available on the Internet Archive.

In April 1994, Isam published the The Palestinian “test” Home page. This page was one of the few websites on the Internet that publishes information about Palestine. The website does not exist any more, but archived copies of it are available on the Internet Archive.

Isam Ishaq holds a PhD in Computer Science Engineering from Ghent University – Belgium and a Masters degree from the Technical University in Berlin – Germany. In addition, he holds several industry certifications: