Version 2.1 of Al-Muqtafi (stand alone) is already in use by more than 130 Palestinian Authority, academic, judicial and non-governmental Palestinian institutions. Online Version 3.0 will be available online in 2003.

Al-Muqtafi was described by Mr. Jo Saba, ex-World Bank representative in the OPT, as "one of the two best projects in the ME region that the World Bank was involved with." It was also highly recommended by a recent technical evaluation study commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Content of Al-Muqtafi Al-Muqtafi contains the following information, in addition to the IoL Website, which includes free information on the legal status in Palestine, the MA program, continuing legal education, reports, research papers and publications:
- All legislation enacted in Palestine, with relations between legislation (abrogation, modification, consolidation, reliance), from the middle of the nineteenth century until today. It spans the various periods of rule over Palestine: Ottoman, British Mandate, Egyptian in Gaza, Jordanian in the West Bank, Israeli Occupation and Palestinian Authority.
- A referential database containing details of all legislation enacted in Palestine over the last 150 years.
- The full text of all laws published in the Palestinian Authority "Palestine Gazette" to-date, and legislation in force from other periods.
- Facsimile images (in PDF) of all legislation scanned from original sources.
- Dictionary (partial) compiled automatically from the full text (Arabic/English)
- Access to a fully indexed hard copy compilation copied mainly from primary sources. Is also available in 80 files of about 35,000 pages at the Institute of Law library in Birzeit University.
The Online Version 3.0 will additionally contain:
- Selected Case Law, 150 court judgments from all periods, indexed with professional commentary
- The text of international legal documents dealing with Palestine or the Palestinians anywhere: declarations, accords, agreements, protocols, "peace process", etc.
- Online IoL legal library catalogue on more than 10,000 legal books, references and periodicals, around half of which are in Arabic.
- Contacts and addresses of lawyers, courts, and other resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
- Comprehensive guide for Al-Muqtafi with an overview of the legal history in Palestine
- Links to other local and international legal websites.
- Subscription details.

Al-Muqtafi Information Technology
Technically, Al-Muqtafi consists of integrated databases:
1) Referential records,
2) Facsimile images of the legal texts as published in the primary sources
3) Full texts.
The number of records (ie. Pieces of legislation) is about 12,000 running into about 35,000 pages. The full text (about half of the legislation is in searchable full text) includes all laws published in the Palestinian Authority "Palestine Gazette" to-date, in addition to all laws in-force from previous periods, the 'in-force' laws having been decided upon according to parameters researched at the IoL.

The databank uses advanced indexing and Boolean search techniques, relations between statutes, titles of all legislation in English as well as in Arabic, interface in Arabic and English (in the stand-alone Version 2.1: four languages for the interface: Arabic, English, French and German), etc.

Software used:
Al-Muqtafi (Version 2.0): Indexed database using MS Access 97 and 2000
Al-Muqtafi (Version 3.0): MS SQL 2000, MS Visual Basic, Active Server Pages (ASP), Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), MS Visio 2000
XML structured text technology
Sakhr Idrisi for advanced Arabic language processing (to be integrated)
MS Windows 2000 Enterprise edition Server
Anti-Virus and Firewall Utilities

Updating
Work on Al-Muqtafi is a never-ending process. It involves:
- Updating the content, corrections, adding new legislation, indexing, translation, establishing relations, determining legislation in-force, converting to XML, etc.
- Upgrading the systems, with new or upgraded software and hardware, protection, telecommunications, etc.
- Training new users, updating the user guidebook, support, monitoring users and subscribers, updating the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) based on feedback, etc.
- Administrative and financial follow-up

Future Developments:
Ideas for further developing Al-Muqtafi:
- To enrich the content with more case law, new legislation, other information, in addition to fine-tuning and keeping up-to-date with information technology.
- To make it the main "portal" for Palestinian jurists, with facilities for having email, tailoring to own requirements, adding more references, news, linking with the legislative drafting process, case management project in "Palestine", etc.
- To enrich the dictionary with more legal terms, keywords and descriptors, to develop it into a lexicon with synonyms and then into a multi-lingual legal computerized thesaurus with conceptual relations and advanced indexing and search.
- To utilize statistical analysis of the data in order to make research and studies of various aspects: legal, judicial, criminal, sociological, etc.
- To develop online Computer-Aided legal education and training.
- To allow the information system used for Al-Muqtafi to make it marketable to other Arab or foreign legal systems.