Board characteristics are among the important aspects of corporate governance mechanisms which contributes significantly in the reducing agency costs and enhancing firm’s financial success. The relationship between board characteristics and firm performance is widely considered by the previous studies. However, mixed results are obtained. Therefore, this study examines the impact of board size, board ownership, board compensations, CEO duality and number of board meetings on financial performance for the companies listed on the Palestine Exchange. A random effect regression is used to analyze the panel data covering the period from 2005 to 2016. The results show that CEO duality and board compensations characteristics negatively affect the performance of the Palestinian companies when measured by the return on assets. On the other hand, the results indicate that return on equity is negatively …