The leather and shoes sector is considered one of the important industrial sectors that has greatly developed through recent decades in terms of investment capital, production capacity and quality. The leather and shoe industry is concentrated in the city of Hebron, where nearly 150 workshops and factories operate in the shoe industry, and 10 leather tanneries provide the industry with required raw materials.

Since early 1970s, the Palestinian industry was oriented towards the Israeli and the local markets, where local producers used to sell their products to the local customers, or to work as subcontractors to Israeli factories, wholesalers and retail shops, however, and based on globalization dynamics, the global industry has deteriorated in the last 10 years, and thereby the subcontracting business relation has sharply declined. As a coping mechanism, the local companies started to target higher segments of export markets, yet mostly through Israeli agents, where the local production has reached European countries, and on the other hand, few local producers managed to directly access Saudi Arabian and Jordanian markets.