Very first contacts took place between CERN and individual expatriate Palestinian scientists, among them a theorist from Birzeit University and a Palestinian student who via the ICTP LHC programme defended his thesis within the ATLAS collaboration.

Two documents were subsequently signed to develop the participation of Palestinian universities in CERN activities: First, an Expression of Interest was signed between the An-Najah University (Nablus) and the ATLAS experiment in association with IJCALB/CNRS in June 2014. Secondly, an International Cooperation Agreement (ICA) was signed between CERN and Palestine in December 2015. 

An-Najah became official member of the ATLAS collaboration in 2022. 

The Winter School in High Energy Physics in Palestine (WISHEPP) program was launched in 2016, organized by An-Najah National University, and has provided advanced training to Palestinian and international students as well as opportunities for Palestinian students to connect with CERN researchers. 

CERN made a donation of High Performance Computing hardware to An-Najah University in 2019. 

A second donation is scheduled to take place in 2026, with the goal to equip both An-Najah University and the Ministry of Higher Education in Ramalah with the necessary hardware to provide the computing power required by the research community of Palestine. 

Palestinian students have participated in the CERN Summer Student Programme for many years and in the last years a special effort was made to take up to two students per year.