An-Najah Staff

A lot of indicators are available on the ground, indicating that desertification is prevailing especially in the southern part of the West Bank. Hebron area, in general, is suffering from desertation conditions, due to many human activities, political, weather, economic, social factors, in addition to limitations and restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation and due to its location in the Mediterranean Sea Basin weather. This basin is characterized by its humidity and coldness in winter, and dryness and hotness in summer. To that end, a project for combating desertification was implemented in Hebron Distinct. The “Land Desertification Control” project was executed with special reference to the most suffering locations, and considering their geographic distribution. This study is a socio–economic one; it was undertaken for this project since it (the project) was built on socio–economic objectives. Accordingly, a tool was needed to measure the project’s contribution to the socio-economic aspects of the study society, which contains all targeted families distributed in Al Dahria, Sureef, Samu’ and Bani Naim. This study was undertaken to analyze the socio-economic content of the project area through sensitive and measurable indicators for the following aspects: (location and residence, mouse and family, services, ownership, crops, biodiversity, agricultural practices, income, animal breeding, technical extension, environmental aspects, woman participation difficulties and proposed solutions), in addition to project impact on these aspects and reasons caused desertification directly and in directly. This study is also aimed at, producing detailed information regarding the socio–economic status of the area and accordingly to identify causes of area desertification, to propose strategies and measures for halting desertification in accordance with participatory activities towards a sustainable development of the area, determination of threats and weaknesses that face the desertification control efforts. A set of tools were used by the researcher so as to execute this task. Of which a detailed questioner discussing all socio–economic aspect was designed and used in the Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) approach. Collecting this information was done by the researcher her self in person. After collecting this char