Map of Palestine

Geography

The Dead Sea is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Palestine's Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel to the west. It is an endorheic lake, meaning there are no outlet streams.

The Dead Sea lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, a geographic feature formed by the Dead Sea Transform (DST). This left lateral-moving transform fault lies along the tectonic plate boundary between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. It runs between the East Anatolian Fault zone in Turkey and the northern end of the Red Sea Rift offshore of the southern tip of Sinai.

(Wadi is the Arabic term for a river valley with a small or intermittent stream; Nahal is the equivalent in Hebrew. The two terms are often used interchangeably in English names for the same body of water.)

Geology

There are two contending hypotheses about the origin of the low elevation of the Dead Sea. The older hypothesis is that the Dead Sea lies in a true rift zone, an extension of the Red Sea Rift, or even of the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa. A more recent hypothesis is that the Dead Sea basin is a consequence of a "step-over" discontinuity along the Dead Sea Transform, creating an extension of the crust with consequent subsidence.

During the late Pliocene-early Pleistocene, what is now the valley of the Jordan River, Dead Sea, and the northern Wadi Arabah was repeatedly inundated by waters from the Mediterranean Sea. The waters formed in a narrow, crooked bay that is called by geologists the Sedom Lagoon, which was connected to the sea through what is now the Jezreel Valley.

Human history

Dwelling in caves near the Dead Sea is recorded in the Hebrew Bible as having taken place before the Israelites came to Canaan, and extensively at the time of King David.

Just northwest of the Dead Sea is Jericho. Somewhere, perhaps on the southeastern shore, would be the cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis which were said to have been destroyed in the time of Abraham: Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) and the three other "Cities of the Plain", Admah, Zeboim and Zoar (Deuteronomy 29:23). Zoar escaped destruction when Abraham's nephew Lot escaped to Zoar from Sodom (Genesis 19:21–22). Before the destruction, the Dead Sea was a valley full of natural tar pits, which was called the vale of Siddim. King David was said to have hidden from Saul at Ein Gedi nearby.

Climate

The Dead Sea has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh), with year-round sunny skies and dry air. It has less than 50 millimetres (2 in) mean annual rainfall and a summer average temperature between 32 and 39 °C (90 and 102 °F). Winter average temperatures range between 20 and 23 °C (68 and 73 °F). The region has weaker ultraviolet radiation, particularly the UVB (erythrogenic rays).

Geography

The Negev contains the oldest continuously exposed surface discovered on Earth, with an approximate age of 1.8 million years. During the Pleistocene, the Negev fluctuated between intervals of relative humidity and intervals of aridity similar to or even more severe than the present day; from around 80,000 to 13,000 years BP, during a time interval roughly corresponding to the Last Glacial Period, the Negev was significantly more humid than today. It covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km2 (5,000 mi2), or at least 55% of the country's land area. It forms an inverted triangle shape whose western side is contiguous with the desert of the Sinai Peninsula, and whose eastern border is the Arabah valley. The Negev has a number of interesting cultural and geological features.

Climate

The Negev region is arid (Eilat receives on average only 24 mm (0.94 in) of rainfall a year), receiving very little rain due to its location to the east of the Sahara (as opposed to the Mediterranean, which lies to the west of Israel), and extreme temperatures due to its location 31 degrees north. However the northernmost areas of the Negev, including Beersheba, are semi-arid. The usual rainfall total from June to October inclusive is zero. Snow and frost are rare in the northern Negev, and snow and frost are unknown in the vicinity of Eilat in the southernmost Negev.

History

Nomadic life in the Negev dates back at least 4,000 years and perhaps as much as 7,000 years.

The first urbanised settlements were established by a combination of Canaanite, Amalekite, Amorite, Nabataean and Edomite groups c. 2000 BCE. Pharaonic Egypt is credited with introducing copper mining and smelting in both the Negev and the Sinai between 1400 and 1300 BC.

According to Israeli archaeologists, in the Hebrew Bible, the term Negev only relates to the northern, semi-arid part of what we call Negev today; of this, the Arad-Beersheba Valley, which receives enough rain to permit agriculture and therefore sedentary occupation (the "desert fringe"), is accordingly defined as "the eastern (biblical) Negev".

Economy and housing

Blueprint Negev is a Jewish National Fund project introduced in 2005. The $600 million project is intended to attract 500,000 new Jewish residents to the Negev by improving transport infrastructure, establishing businesses, developing water resources and introducing programmes to protect the environment. A planned artificial desert river, swimming pools and golf courses raised concerns among environmentalists. Critics oppose those plans, calling instead for an inclusive plan for the green vitalisation of existing population centres, investment in Bedouin villages, a clean-up of toxic industries and development of job options for the unemployed.