Negev

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Negev (Hebrew: נֶגֶב‎, Tiberian vocalization: Néḡeḇ) is the desert region of southern Israel. The indigenous Bedouin citizens of the region refer to the desert as an-Naqab (Arabic: النقب‎). The origin of the word Negev is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'. In the Bible the word Negev is also used for the direction 'south'.

Contents 1 Geography 2 Geology 3 Climate 4 Ancient History 5 Bedouin, the longest continuous inhabitants 5.1 Bedouin as nomads, Bedouin as citizens 6 The Negev Today 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Geography

The Negev covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km² (4,700 sq mi) 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. Among the latter are three enormous, craterlike makhteshim, which are unique to the region; Makhtesh Ramon, Makhtesh Gadol and Makhtesh Katan.

The Negev can be split into five different ecological regions: northern, western and central Negev, the high plateau and the Arabah Valley. The northern Negev, or Mediterranean zone receives 300 mm of rain annually and has fairly fertile soils. The western Negev receives 250 mm of rain per year, with light and partially sandy soils. Sand dunes can reach heights of up to 30 metres here. Home to the city of Beersheba, the central Negev has an annual precipitation of 200 mm and is characterized by impervious soil, allowing minimum penetration of water with greater soil erosion and water runoff. The high plateau area of Ramat HaNegev (Hebrew: רמת הנגב‎, The Negev Heights) stands between 370 metre and 520 metre above sea level with extreme temperatures in summer and winter. The area gets 100 mm of rain per year, with inferior and partially salty soils. The Arabah Valley along the Jordanian border stretches 180 km from Eilat in the south to the tip of the Dead Sea in the north. The Arabah Valley is very arid with barely 50 mm of rain annually, the Arava has inferior soils in which little can grow without irrigation and special soil additives.

[edit] Geology

The Negev is a rocky desert. It is a melange of brown, rocky, dusty mountains interrupted by wadis (dry riverbeds that bloom briefly after rain) and deep craters. The area actually was once the floor of a primordial sea, and a sprinkling of marine snail shells still covers the earth.

The Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility was planted in the area of Beer Sheva and Wadi el-Na'am in 1979 because the area was perceived as invulnerable to leakage; However within a decade, cracks were found in the rock beneath Ramat Hovav.[1] From its inception, the facility developed a history of accidents and closures; in the past regional councils regularly discovered that the evaporation pools of Ramat Hovav's Machteshim chemical factory had overflowed, or that waste was leaking from drainage pipes into their reservoir. Nearly ten years after its establishment, outcrops of the chalk under Ramat Hovav showed fractures potentially leading to serious soil and groundwater contamination in the future. [2]

[edit] Climate

The whole Negev region is incredibly arid, 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.

The average rainfall total from June through October is zero.^[1]

Average climate of Beersheba[1]	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Average maximum temperature (°C)	17	17	20	26	29	31	33	33	31	28	24	18
Average minimum temperature (°C)	7	7	9	13	16	18	21	21	19	17	12	8

[edit] Ancient History

Nomadic life in the Negev dates back at least 4,000 years ^[2] and perhaps as much as 7,000 years.^[3] The first urbanized settlements were established by a combination of Canaanite, Amalekite, and Edomite groups circa 2000 BCE.^[2] Pharaonic Egypt is credited with introducing copper mining and smelting in both the Negev and the Sinai between 1400 and 1300 BCE.^{[2] [4]}

In the 9th century BCE, development and expansion of mining in both the Negev and Edom (modern Jordan) coincided with the rise of the Assyrian Empire.^[5] Beersheba was the region's capital and a center for trade in the 8th century BCE.^[5] Small settlements of Jews in the areas around the capital and later further afield were existent between 1020 and 928 BCE.^[5]

The 4th century BCE arrival of the Nabateans resulted in the development of irrigation systems that supported at least five new urban centers: Avdat, Mamshit, Shivta, Halutza (or Elusa), and Nitzana.^[5] The Nabateans controlled the trade and spice route between their capital Petra and the Gazan seaports. Nabatean currency, as well as the remains of red and orange potsherds identified as a trademark of their civilization have been found along the route, remnants of which are also still visible.^[5]

Nabatean control of southern Palestine ended when the Roman empire annexed their lands in 106 AD.^[5] The population, largely made up of Arabian nomads and Nabateans, remained largely tribal and independent of Roman rule, with an animist belief system.^[5]

Byzantine rule in the 4th century AD introduced Christianity to the population.^[5] Agricultural-based cities were established and the population grew exponentially.^[5]

The arrival of Muslim forces in the 7th century AD was accepted with relative ease by the population, due to their shared Arab background, and Islam was easily adopted by most as well.^[5] Upon Islamic conquest, permanent agricultural sites were established and the Ummayads built hundred of farms and systematic terracing of wadis. The efforts, in part were made to settle the semi-nomadic Arab tribes of the Naqab region.^[6]

[edit] Bedouin, the longest continuous inhabitants

Main article: Bedouin

(See section on Changing Ways of Life)

Main article: Negev Bedouins

Nomadic tribes ruled the Negev largely independently and with a relative lack of interference for the next thousand years.^[5] What is known of this time is largely derived from oral histories and folk tales of tribes from the Wadi Musa and Petra areas in present-day Jordan^[7]

The Bedouins of the Negev historically survived chiefly on sheep and goat husbandry. Scarcity of water and of permanent pastoral land required them to move constantly. The Bedouin in years past established few permanent settlements, although some were built, leaving behind remnants of stone houses called 'baika.' ^[3] Late in the rule of the Ottoman Empire, an administrative center for southern Palestine was established in Beersheba and schools and a railway station were built.^[7] The authority of the tribal chiefs over the region was recognized by the Ottomans.^[7]

The tribal culture and way of life has changed dramatically recently, and today hardly any Bedouin citizens of Israel are nomadic. ^[8]

[edit] Bedouin as nomads, Bedouin as citizens

Between 1948 and 1966, the new State of Israel imposed a military administration over Arabs of the region and designated 85% of the Negev "State Land." All Bedouin habitation on this newly-declared State Land was retroactively termed illegal and "unrecognized." Now that Negev lands the Bedouin had inhabited upwards of 500 years was designated State Land, the Bedouin were no longer able to fully engage in their sole means of self-subsistence – agriculture and grazing. The government then forcibly concentrated these Bedouin tribes into the Siyag triangle of Beer Sheba, Arad and Dimona [3]. Today, at least 75,000 citizens live in 40 unrecognized villages.

In order to reinforce the invisible Siyag fence, the State employed a reining mechanism, the Black Goat Law of 1950. The Black Goat Law curbed grazing so as to prevent land erosion by prohibiting the grazing of goats outside one's recognized land holdings. Since few Bedouin territorial claims were recognized, most grazing was thereby rendered illegal. (Both Ottoman and British land registration processes failed to reach into the Negev region. Most Bedouin who had the option, preferred not to register their lands as this would mean being taxed.) Those whose land claims were recognized found it almost impossible to keep their goats within the periphery of their newly limited range, and into the 1970’s and ‘80’s, only a small portion of the Bedouin were able to continue to graze their goats. Instead of migrating with their goats in search of pasture, the majority of the Bedouin migrated in search of wage-labor.[4]

In 1979 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon declared a 1,500 square kilometer area in the Negev, a protected nature reserve, rendering a major portion of the Negev almost entirely out of bounds for Bedouin herders. In conjunction, he established the 'Green Patrol,' [5] the ‘environmental paramilitary unit’ with the mission of fighting Bedouin ‘infiltration’ into national Israeli land by preventing Bedouin from creating facts on the land and grazing their animals. During Sharon’s tenure as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), the Green Patrol removed 900 Bedouin encampments and cut goat herds by more than 1/3.[6] Today the black goat is nearly extinct, and Bedouin in Israel do not have enough access to black goat hair to weave tents. Denied access to their former sources of sustenance, severed from the possibility of access to water, electricity, roads, education, and health care in the unrecognized villages, and trusting in government promises that they would receive services if they moved, in the 1970's and 80's, tens of thousands of Bedouin resettled in 7 legal towns constructed by the government.(Falah, Ghazi. “The Spatial Pattern of Bedouin Sedentarization in Israel,” GeoJournal, 1985 Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 361-368.) However, the towns lacked any business districts and the urban townships have long been rife with the social breakdown resulting from near-total joblessness, crime and drugs.[7]

[edit] The Negev Today

Today, the Negev is home to some 379,000 Jews and some 175,000 Bedouin. At least 80,000 Bedouin citizens live in unrecognized villages under threat of demolition; these citizens are subject to removal at any time via the Removal of Intruders Law. [8]

The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. 185,000), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city of Eilat. It contains several development towns include Dimona, Arad, Mitzpe Ramon, as well as a number of small Bedouin cities, including Rahat and Tel as-Sabi. There are also several kibbutzim, including Revivim and Sde Boker; the latter became the home of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, after his retirement from politics.

The desert is home to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, whose faculties include the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research and the Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies, both located on the Midreshet Ben-Gurion campus adjacent to Sde Boker.

85% of the Negev is used by the Israel Defense Forces for training purposes.[9]. In the remaining portion of the Negev available for civilian purposes, a large number of citizens live together in close proximity to a range of types of hazardous infrastructure, which includes a nuclear reactor, 22 agro and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator Ramat Hovav, cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and 2 rivers of open sewage. [10]

[edit] See also

• Blueprint Negev

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Negev Wikitravel
• Israel's Negev Information Site
• Israel's Negev Desert
• About the Bedouin in unrecognized villages
• About changes in Bedouin life
• About Negev environmental issues
• Negev Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline

This article is about the southern region of Israel. For the light machine gun see IMI Negev.

v • d • e Deserts Africa Bayuda Desert · Chalbi Desert · Danakil Desert · Eastern Desert · Ferio Desert · Kalahari Desert · Libyan Desert · Namib Desert · Nubian Desert · Nyiri Desert · Richtersveld · Sahara · Ténéré · White Desert Antarctica Antarctica Asia Aral Karakum · Badain Jaran Desert · Betpak-Dala · Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert · Gobi Desert · Hami Desert · Indus Valley Desert · Karakum Desert · Kum-tagh Desert · Kyzyl Kum · Lop Desert · Ordos Desert · Qaidam · Registan Desert · Saryesik-Atyrau Desert · Taklamakan Desert · Tengger Desert · Thal Desert · Thar-Cholistan Desert · Tottori Sand Dunes · Ustyurt Plateau Australia and New Zealand Gibson Desert · Great Sandy Desert · Great Victoria Desert · Little Sandy Desert · Painted Desert · Rangipo Desert · Simpson Desert · Strzelecki Desert · Tanami Desert · Western Desert Europe Accona Desert · Bardenas Reales · Błędów Desert · Deliblatska Peščara · Hálendi · Oltenian Sahara · Ryn Desert · Tabernas Desert Middle East Ad-Dahna Desert · Arabian Desert · Dasht-e Kavir · Dasht-e Lut · Dasht-e Margoh · Dasht-e Naomid · Judean Desert · Nefud  · Rub' al Khali · Negev · Syrian Desert · Tihamah North America and Hawaii Agate Desert · Alvord Desert · Amargosa Desert · Baja California Desert · Black Rock Desert · Channeled scablands · Chihuahuan Desert · Colorado Plateau · Escalante Desert · Great Basin · Great Salt Lake Desert · Jornada del Muerto · Kaʻū Desert · Mojave Desert · Nk'mip Desert · Owyhee Desert · Painted Desert · Smoke Creek Desert · Sonoran Desert · Tule Desert (Nevada) South America Atacama Desert · La Guajira Desert · Médanos de Coro National Park · Monte Desert · Patagonian Desert · Sechura Desert · Tatacoa Desert See also: List of deserts and List of deserts by area