Negev

The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city and port of Eilat. It contains several development towns, including Dimona, Arad and Mitzpe Ramon, as well as a number of small Bedouin towns, including Rahat and Tel Sheva and Lakiya. 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.

Although historically part of a separate region (known during the Roman period as Arabia Petraea), the Negev was added to the proposed area of Mandatory Palestine, of which large parts later became Israel, on 10 July 1922, having been conceded by British representative St John Philby "in Trans-Jordan's name". Despite this, the region remained exclusively Arab until 1946; in response to the British Morrison–Grady Plan which would have allotted the area to an Arab state, the Jewish Agency enacted the 11 points in the Negev plan to begin Jewish settlement in the area. A year later, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine allotted the area to the Jewish State which became Israel.

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.

In October 2012, global travel guide publisher Lonely Planet rated the Negev second on a list of the world's top ten regional travel destinations for 2013, noting its current transformation through development.

Etymology and other names

The origin of the word ''Negev'' is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'; in the Hebrew Bible Arad-Beersheba Valley defined as "the eastern (biblical) Negev".

In Arabic, the Negev is known as ''an-Naqab'' or ''an-Naqb'' ('the ountainpass'), though it was not thought of as a distinct region until the demarcation of the Egypt-Ottoman frontier in the 1890s and has no single Arabic name.Palestine Exploration Quarterly (April 1941). ''The Negev, or Southern Desert of Palestine by George E. Kirk.'' London. Page 57.

During the British Mandate, it was called "Beersheba sub-district".

Geography

The Negev contains the oldest discovered surface 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 , 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 (box canyons), which are unique to the region: Makhtesh Ramon, HaMakhtesh HaGadol, and HaMakhtesh HaKatan.

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. It 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 of rain annually and has fairly fertile soils. The western Negev receives of rain per year, with light and partially sandy soils. Sand dunes can reach heights of up to here. Home to the city of Beersheba, the central Negev has an annual precipitation of and is characterized by impervious soil, known as loess, allowing minimum penetration of water with greater soil erosion and water runoff. The high plateau area of Negev Mountains/Ramat HaNegev ( he, רמת הנגב, ''The Negev Heights'') stands between and above sea level with extreme temperatures in summer and winter. The area gets of rain per year, with inferior and partially salty soils. The Arabah Valley along the Jordanian border stretches from Eilat in the south to the tip of the Dead Sea in the north. The Arabah Valley is very arid with barely of rain annually. It has inferior soils, in which little can grow without irrigation and special soil additives.

Flora and fauna

Vegetation in the Negev is sparse, but certain trees and plants thrive there, among them '' Acacia'', ''Pistacia'', ''Retama'', '' Urginea maritima'' and '' Thymelaea''. '' Hyphaene thebaica'' or doum palm can be found in the Southern Negev. The Evrona Nature Reserve is the most northerly point in the world where this palm can be found.

A small population of Arabian leopards, an endangered animal in the Arabian peninsula, survives in the southern Negev. Other carnivora found in the Negev are the caracal, the striped hyena, the Arabian wolf, the golden jackal and the marbled polecat."Israel's Unique Wildlife"
at the Davidson Institute.

The Arabah mountain gazelle survives with a few individuals in the Negev. The dorcas gazelle is more numerous, with some 1,000–1,500 individuals in the Negev. Some 350 to 500 Nubian ibex live in the Negev Highlands and in the Eilat Mountains.

The Negev shrew is a species of mammal of the family '' Soricidae'' that is found only in Israel. A population of the critically endangered Kleinmann's tortoise (also known as the Negev tortoise) survives in the sands of the western and central Negev Desert.

Animals that were reintroduced after their extinction in the wild or localized extinction respectively are the Arabian oryx and the Persian fallow deer. Also introduced was the Asiatic wild ass, which in the Negev counts about 250 animals.

Like many areas in Israel and the rest of the Middle East, the Negev used to host in the distant past the Asiatic lion and the Asiatic cheetah, right until their complete extinction at the hands of humans in later centuries.

Climate

The Negev region is arid ( Eilat receives on average only 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-desert. The usual rainfall total from June through October 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

Prehistorical nomads

Nomadic life in the Negev dates back at least 4,000 yearsMariam Shahin. Palestine: A Guide. (2005) Interlink Books. and perhaps as much as 7,000 years.

Bronze Age

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

Biblical

Extent of biblical Negev

According to Israeli archaeologists, in the Hebrew Bible

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