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The Negev (meaning "dry") makes up about 60% of the modern
state of Israel (4600 sq. miles out of 8100 total). A narrow strip of it north
of Beersheba gets, in good years, up to 14 inches (350 mm.) of annual rainfall,
enough to grow barley. This northern Negev saw a fair amount of settlement in
antiquity. South of Beersheba, though, the annual rainfall drops below 8 inches.
As far as the Ramon Crater (see map), wild plants still cover at least 10% of
the surface, and this is grazing desert (midbar in Hebrew, which comes from
davar, an ancient term for "grazing"). South of the Ramon Crater, however,
plants are found only in the wadis. Here the desert can support no flocks.
Why so little rain? First, at 31 degrees latitude the Negev is
well within the belt where deserts tend to form in the Northern Hemisphere.
There are two such belts, north and south. The reason is as follows: The region
of the equator gets the most direct sunlight, which heats the air. "Hot air has
two important qualities: it can hold enormous quantities of moisture, and it
rises up into the atmosphere. So hot tropical air tends to be moist and rise
into the atmosphere. As this air rises it cools, condensing the moisture and
converting it to water where it falls as rain. This is why
rain forests tend to occur near the equator. What goes up must come down, and
gravity pulls this mass of rising air back to the ground. Tropical air typically
falls at about 30 degrees latitude on either side of the equator and along the
desert belt, but robbed of its moisture it is now hot and dry. The result is
often persistent high pressure systems that tend to block incoming storms, or
push them into other regions." (U.S. National Park Service.)
Furthermore, the great supplier of rain for the Holy Land is
the Mediterranean. Yet the part of the Negev that is south of the Ramon Crater
lacks this sea to its west. Instead it has the Sinai desert and, farther west,
the Sahara. What's more, even when the wind blows from the northwest, most of
the Negev lies too far from the sea to receive much rain.
There
are spectacular examples of erosion in the Negev, but falling rain had only a
small part in their making. They are rather the result of fallen rain (springs
and pools), together with other factors, among them the steep decline of the
central and eastern Negev toward the Syro-African Rift Valley – in other words,
toward the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea. Driving southward, the first
example we encounter is the deep cut in the riverbed called Zin. (The modern
Israelis gave it that Biblical name.) From the grave of David Ben Gurion,
Israel's first Prime Minister, we can get a good view of this rift, as in the
picture.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE(r),
(c) Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The
Lockman Foundation. (www.Lockman.org)
© 2003 Near East Tourist
Agency (NET)
Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur
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