LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNTIES USING PARTICIPATORY APPRAISAL OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE "SOUTH HEBRON REGION"

Sharif M. Abu Karsh
The Arab American University, Jenin, Palestine
Bassem Ahmad Alqadi
Ministry of Education, Palestine
ABSTRACT
Palestine is considered conflict area because it’s difficult to achieve economic
development in it. Moreover, there is the difficulty of executing strategic plans to achieve
complete economic development for the reason of economic, political and military instability, for
this reason it was essential to find a new technique for the economic development purposes in the
South of Hebron with considering local resources, time factor and the current situation. The
researchers founded that the participatory appraisal of competitive advantage approach is the
suitable approach to achieve local economic developments. An extensive search of the literature
found that there is a scarcity of empirical research examining local economic development
opportunities by using participatory appraisal of competitive advantage (PACA).This study was
conducted on “Marble and Stone, Dairy production and electrical” sectors in the south of Hebron.
To achieve the objectives of this research, the researcher used a combination of primary and
secondary data collection sources. The interviews and workshops were used as a main data
collection tools. The researcher had attended a comprehensive and basic participatory appraisal of
competitive advantage (PACA) training course before he started the data collection stages.