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TOURISM ACTIVITY IN THE SOUTH OF WEST BANK/PALESTINE (AN ANALYTICAL STUDY) By Gassan kasem Rasheed Omar Supervisor D. Ahmed Ali Khashman. ABSTRACT This study aims to analyze tourism activity in the southern West Bank (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho), and explores, as well, tourist attraction in the area. It aims to highlight the emportance of both natural and human potentials available as tourist attractions that contribute to achieve economic benfits. Moreover this study attempts to identify tourists charactaerstics in respect of their arrival, their socio-economic and demographic characterstics, in addition to addressing the problems they have faced during their visit to the area with aview to providing the most appropriate solutions. The aim of this study also to shed light on the reality of tourism ifrastracture and services provided in the area, attempting to gouge their ability to meet the demands needs of the tourist market currently and in the future, and tourists satisfaction toward them.It also defints the problems that citzen usually face because of tourists activities trying to provide sutable solutions. To achieve the above objectives two different kinds of questionnaires were distributed. The first was directed to tourists to answer questions related to nationality, age, educational level, purpose of visit, sources of information, and the level of satisfaction of their visit. While the second questionnaire was distributed to citizens in the study area in order to measure their level of involvement in tourist, their evaluation of the standards of problems they suffer. Data were analyzed by using the statistical package (SPSS) to produce the ratios, means and cross tabulation, Chi square were also used. The study concludes that the dominant tourism group visiting the area were of European nationalities while the Americans ranked second. The area of sothern West Bank witnesses active religious tourism, as the most dominant type of tourism where religious factors onsititute principle motivation for visit reachire apercentage of 55.9% for all tourism groups.The study shown that the age of tourism groups ranges from 40 and below69%. Tourists get information about the study from avariety of sources, namely: friends, relatives,internetand religious resources. The study also explain obstacles facing tourists in the fields of security, cleanness and lack of illustrative tourist guidelines.citizens as concluded in the study, encourage tourism in the area directing their children to complete their study and work in the field of tourism. As aresult of the tourism activity,citizens face problems with reg and the rise in the prices of foods and drinks in addition to increasing pressure on services. Finaly the study recommends utiling the natural, historical, more attention shoud paid by the all kind of media in promoting tourism. and human potentioals of earea, and make who have money work at tourism levl, and give also study the tourism services and what they want, making available planning and effect to ecrese the tourists on the encome, finaly to develop and encrese such as university.

The study aimed to induct and investigate the future development of Jordan in view of expected population movement under Demographic window. In addition to suggest local development, Administrative, economic and population recommendations that come onto restructuring the socio-economic status via local community development. The study benefited from analytical approach to reach its goals, the main findings are the imbalances of population distribution and its density due to the imperfect Socio-economic policies within development areas. This fact is adversely affected the local development societies in rural, Badia and remote areas and, increase its suffering of poverty and unemployment. The main recommendations of the study is the establishment of "Regional Development Councils" to completely replace the Ministry of Interior offices ; this means that , a re-drawing of regions should be driven to reflect the Geo-economic development strategies and aspirations . Giving more attentions to think-tanks, entrepreneurs and, free work as a critical part of the game, also promoting people awareness and enthusiasm toward establishing their own enterprises is expected to have a more important role in local development.

Banks in Jordan encounter sometimes sudden shocks, thus leading to strain burdens on the success of fiscal and monetary policies and to adversely affect the macroeconomic function of banks. The notion of this study stems from the fact that though Jordan has been facing many banking crises since 1985, it has no systematic means or systems to predict and deal priori with banking crises. This study aims at analyzing Jordan's banking crises in order to set up a model that helps in predicting the banking crisis and identifying the steps to be taken to minimize and/or alleviate its vulnerability. The study benefited from secondary data and applied the techniques of the comparative approach, historical analysis and industrial norms analysis. A CAMELs approach utilizing the above-mentioned techniques in addition to advanced statistical techniques, Ohlson’s Logit Model and Multivariate Discriminate approach are used, to prove the intended aims. The population of the study consists of 26 banks; 16 sustained banks and 10 failed ones, using cross - sectional data. It should be noted that few banks suffered bankruptcy and so they withdrew from the banking system. Historical data are sometimes used for comparative analysis and for data mining indicators preceding banks’ failure. The study concludes that banks failures in Jordan occurred mainly due to the individual bank’s mismanagement. Thereby, lack of transparency, weak regulations, inactive control by the Central Bank and a spread of implicit fraud; intra-bank and inter-bank fraud are the main causes of Jordan banking sudden shocks. Also, the study has estimated banking crises' cost during 1980-2004 to be between 825 million JDs and 1099 million JDs. The Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) advances to support banks reached almost 4.4 billion JDs during that period, in addition to approximately 84 million JDs to other financial institutions. The study has built a model based on financial soundness indicators (FSI) in view of CAMELs approach of analysis. The proposed model is developed to encompass all threatening factors that help analyze and highlight bank ongoing operations. Thereby it envelops 121 indicators, of which 73 are developed in this study. The study reached the following conclusions:- 1. Generally speaking, failed banks experienced a high level of dispersion (deviation) against industry norms, in comparison to operating banks. 2. Among operating banks, foreign banks showed a better soundness indicators’. 3. Rapid, consistent and comprehensive responses to banking crises definitely reduces the negative macroeconomic impact. On the contrary, monetary authority’s delay in response may create a breakdown in the payment system, reduce public confidence and increase the negative macroeconomic consequences. 4. Legal environment, effective bank regulation and supervision coupled with a well funded depository insurance scheme and a flexible lender of last resort facility help reduce the negative macroeconomic impact of banking crisis. 5. Capital Adequacy Indicators (CA), Asset Quality Indicators (AQ), Earnings, Profits, Efficiency & Competitiveness Indicators (EPEC), Liquidity indicators (L), and Sensitivity to Market Risk and Openness indicators (SMR) can accurately classify operating banks (failed and sustained) with 81.7%, 91.5%, 81.7%, 76.3% and 70% accuracy rates respectively. The prediction probabilities of these indicators of bankruptcy incidence are 20.5%, 7.8%, 7.5%, 39.8% and 24.5% respectively. 6. Summing up the above-mentioned net results of the four model components (CA, AQ, EPEC, L and SMR), the study found three significant independent efficiency ratios, asset to own capital and net interest margin. These indicators have shown a significant negative impact on the bankrupted banks’ status. The model can correctly classify failed and sustained banks by 88.3%. The indicators showed a prediction probability of 19.5 % of bankruptcy status and the model has a stable explanatory relationship. 7. All groups of financial indicators have inverse relationships with bankruptcy. 8. The probability of bankruptcy for failed banks is much higher than that for sustained banks to all groups of indicators apart from sensitivity and openness group. The study has the following recommendations: 1. To establish an "Early Warning System Unit" or "Financial Institutions Monitoring Unit" under the supervision of three independent institutions (the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation (MOP). The committee should be responsible for forming a macroprudential analysis to include a detailed analysis of two major indicators, micro prudential indicators, which is almost based on CAMELs indicators; and Macroeconomic indicators. 2. To establish a "Banking Safety Net" to ensure the stability of banking soundness as well as the soundness of the market economy. The Net is proposed to be comprised of Central Bank of Jordan, Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation, Ministry of Industry & Trade, Ministry of Finance, Jordan Loan Guarantee Corporation, Deposit Insurance Corporation, two representatives of insurance companies, a representative of Amman Stock of Exchange market, Banks Association, money exchangers, two academics and two interested researchers. Finally, this study envelops six chapters, the first introduces the methodology and revision of related studies, Ch2 reviews the theoretical perspective of banking crisis’ determinants. Analyzing banking crises’ status in Jordan is shown in detail in Ch3. Whereas, Ch 4 focuses on building the Early Warning model utilizing an initiative criteria of benchmark and industry norm approaches, this chapter relied on financial and nonfinancial soundness indicators to form the warning system. Ch 5 deals with the prediction of banking crises in Jordan using Logit approach and finally the conclusions and recommendations are covered in Ch 6.

Nevertheless, the socio-economic crisis spread dangerously at the late of the year 1988 and the beginning of the year 1989. Along the numerous rumors regarding the future of the Jordanian economy and what was happening behind the economic scene: • The Central Bank sold a part of its gold and foreign reserves. • Moreover, smuggling semi-organized and private capitals by transferring foreign currencies outside the country, increasing speculation by influential businessmen and investors, and finally proclaiming certain policies by the government and the Central Bank but implementing another. • For all these reasons and others, weak decisions were taken rapidly; hence, public trust in the future of the Jordanian economy regressed significantly. • Furthermore, while standards of living declined, the intensity of poverty increased. • As a result, speculators and capital owners won the situation. Yet, the economic crisis rooted also from the governmental attempts to follow a national economic policy in which some of the apparent problems were handled. • Consequently, the government promulgated the depreciation in the value of the JD intensified the crisis severely. After the spreading of the latter deterioration, price levels were climbed, and for the majority of the population, standards of living declined too. This resulted in the acceleration of financial and economic pressures. Therefore, turning to the IMF for help and assistance was inevitable. Thus, the government agreed on framing a General Structural Adjustment Program for 5 years (1989-1993). These facts answer WHY Reform?