British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 369

CHAPTER IX.

supported a somewhat larger population than does the area to-day. The circumstances to which this was attributable can only be deduced from the relevant archaeological records*, but it seems clear that the physical conditions have not changed.

148. Physically the Negeb may be divided into three zones :

(a) the steep scarp lying to the east of the watershed between the Mediterranean and the Wadi Araba (the southerly extension of the great Jordan-Dead Sea depression):

(b) the counterscarp on the western side of this watershed; and (c) the plain in the extreme north-west of the sub-district.

Climatically, a great part of the area covered by zones (ii) and (b) is desert with a rainfall of less than 100 mms, a year, tailing down to an even lower figure.

14.9. The first two zones mentioned above consist in the main of a wild confusion of bare limestone hills, with neither soil nor water. In the more easterly zone (a), the wadis have carried most of the soil down to the Araba, where it bears scanty xerophile scrub. This provides winter pasture for the goats and camels of a few small tribes. Agriculture is confined to small isolated areas in the Wadi Araba (mainly on the Trans-Jordan side of the frontier) and in the Wadi Igfi; and is extremely precarious because of the paucity of rainfall. In the more westerly zone (b), the erosion in the hills has progressed as far as in zone (a) but the gradients of the wadis is less steep and consequently they have retained a greater depth of soil. The greater rainfall on the side of the watershed permits pasture on a larger scale, and some agriculture in the wadis, though again this is made precarious by the uncertainty of the rainfall. The region occupied by these two zones is broadly that lying east and south-east of a line running north-east from El Anja - the "unoccupied area" of the Partition Commission. They described it thus : "It consists of a series of low ranges of rugged hills extending east and west, with undulating and irregular gravel• plains between them. The lower slopes of the hills are usually boulder-strewn and covered with gravel, and, although here and there areas of wind-blown sand and alluvial deposits occur, they are isolated from each other. This area has not been tested for water as, even if water were found, the isolation of the individual patches of soil and their distance from markets make it exceedingly doubtful whether any part of it can ever be put to economic use".**

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*For example: Palestine Exploration Quarterly, April, 1941:

"The Negev, or Southern Desert. of Palestine" by G. E. Kirk.

"The Wilderness of Zin" by C. Leonard Woolley, and T. E. Lawrence, 1916 .

** Report of the Palestine Partition Commission, 1988, paragraph 110.

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