Negev

The Negev is a dry land in the Middle East.

It is shaped like a big triangle. There are rocky hills, sandy places and deep canyons. It does not rain much, so only tough bushes grow there.

The Negev is a dry region in the Middle East. Britannica describes it as shaped like a triangle with its point at the south, where it reaches the Red Sea at the port city of Eilat. To the west lies the Sinai Peninsula, and to the east the long valley of the Jordan and the Arava. Its name comes from a Hebrew word meaning to dry.

The Negev is drier the farther south you go. Around the city of Beersheba, in the north, 200 to 305 millimeters of rain fall in a year, enough for some grain to grow without watering. The central plateau gets only 76 to 102 millimeters, and at Eilat, in the far south, there is almost no rain at all.

Britannica defines the Negev as an arid region in the Middle East, a triangle with its apex at the south, bounded by the Sinai Peninsula on the west and the Jordan Valley on the east. Its northern limit, where it blends into the coastal plain, the Judaean Hills and the Wilderness of Judaea, is indistinct; with an arbitrary boundary near 30°25′ N, Britannica gives an area of about 12,000 km². The name derives from the Hebrew root n-g-b, 'to dry'.

Britannica argues the Negev is semiarid rather than a true desert in its north: around Beersheba (about 250 m elevation) rainfall of 200 to 305 mm a year permits unirrigated grain in some years, while the central plateau (250 to 1,035 m) receives 76 to 102 mm and Eilat almost none. Rainfall varies greatly from year to year, and winter flash floods are common in the many wadis, or seasonal watercourses, that dissect the land.

Only tough bushes grow in most of the Negev.

Long ago, the white Arabian oryx disappeared from the wild. People raised oryx at a nature reserve and set them free in the Negev again.

Away from farms, Britannica notes, wild desert scrub grows in the Negev. Animals have to cope with heat and very little water. In the south, near Eilat, August temperatures can climb to 46 °C.

One animal has an amazing comeback story. The Arabian oryx, a white antelope with long, straight horns, vanished from the wild in 1972 because of overhunting. Wildlife managers bred oryx at the Hai-Bar Yotvata reserve, starting with four pairs from a zoo in Phoenix, Arizona. From 1997, oryx were set free at three places in the Negev. One group grew strongly; the others did not do as well, possibly because of small differences in their food.

Britannica observes that wild desert scrub grows in the Negev, and that Eilat, at its southern tip, has high heat and aridity, with August temperatures rising to 46 °C.

A case study in the IUCN Re-introduction Specialist Group's Global Re-introduction Perspectives (2008) documents the reintroduction of the Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx), extinct in the wild by 1972. A permanent breeding core at Hai-Bar Yotvata, founded from four pairs from the Phoenix Zoo, could supply about 15 females every three years. After a 1989 feasibility study, oryx were released near the Shachak spring in the upper Arava (31 animals, 1997 to 1998), in the Paran riverbed (40, 2000 to 2002) and in the Ketzev riverbed (40, 2003 to 2007). The Shachak population grew strongly, while the others declined through low reproduction, possibly linked to subtle nutritional differences; the project rated itself partially successful.

Long ago, traders led camels across the Negev.

They carried sweet-smelling incense. Towns grew along their road. Today people use pipes to bring water, so farms can grow food in the desert.

People have lived in the Negev for thousands of years. Britannica says arrowheads from about 7000 BCE have been found on the central plateau. From about 2,300 years ago, Nabataean towns here lay along a trade route that carried frankincense and myrrh, sweet-smelling resins, from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. Britannica says the Nabataeans terraced the land and saved winter rain, so they could farm in the desert.

For many centuries afterward, few people lived in the Negev, mostly nomadic Bedouin, who moved from place to place. Since the 1940s, new farms and towns have been built. Pipelines bring water from the north, and towns such as Beersheba, Dimona, Arad and Eilat have grown.

Britannica records Late Stone Age flint arrowheads (about 7000 BCE) and Copper and Bronze Age implements (about 4000 to 1400 BCE) on the central plateau. The Nabataeans developed terracing and the conservation of winter rains, making the Negev a productive agricultural area and later a granary of the Roman Empire. UNESCO's 2005 inscription of the Incense Route: Desert Cities in the Negev covers the Nabataean towns of Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat and Shivta, with fortresses and agricultural landscapes, witnesses to the frankincense and myrrh trade between south Arabia and the Mediterranean from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE.

After the 7th century, Britannica writes, the population for more than 1,200 years was small and mostly nomadic Bedouin. Modern agricultural settlement began with three kibbutzim in 1943; after 1948 the National Water Plan piped water south, and with year-round sunshine the northwestern loess yields grain, fodder, fruit and vegetables. Minerals include potash, bromine and magnesium at Sedom, copper at Timna, phosphates and natural gas; planned towns include Dimona (1955), Arad (1961) and Eilat (settled 1949), with Beersheba the region's main city.