Introduction
The
Negev Desert has the shape of an inverted triangle with its summit
in Eilat on the Red Sea and its base along a line that connects the
seashore city of Gaza to the oasis of Ein Gedi. With a maximum length
of 250 kilometers from the north to the south and a minimal width
of 125 kilometers from the west to the east, this desert covers an
area of more than 12,000 square kilometers. Geographers identify many
distinct regions: the plain on the coast where the Gaza strip stretches
out connecting Judea in the north to the Palestinian plain of El Arish
in the southwest; to the east, the Negev plain borders the Beersheva
Basin through which the wadi bearing the same name passes; the Negev
mountains consolidate the mountainous zone, hollowed out with craters
and dominated by the Ramon Mountain that rises to 1,035 meters; the
Faran or Paran Plateau; the Arava Valley that runs along the Syro-African
depression and the mountains of Eilat. In the center of the Negev,
the summits vary from an altitude of 900 meters to 1,035 meters. Three
machtechim – rocky depressions in the shape of mortars – form a landscape
that is unlike any other in the world: the machtech Ramon (30 kilometers
long and 8 kilometers wide), the machtech ha-Gadol and the machtech
ha-Katan. Temperature changes are abrupt and the precipitation rate
is among the lowest: 250 millimeters in the north, 50 to 100 millimeters
in the center and 25 to 50 millimeters in the Arava and the surrounding
areas of Eilat.
A drainage bed, the Nahal Bsor, which feeds the Nahal Beersheva, the
Nahal Hebron and the Nahal Grar, flows across the Beersheva Basin
from the southeast to the northwest. Usually dry, these rivers know
only rare and fierce floods during the rain season. The Beersheva
Basin that climbs towards the east from about 100 meters to 500 meters
is considered to be a semi-desert zone while the rest of the Negev,
with the exception perhaps of the high summits in the center, is considered
to be a desert zone. The capital of the Negev, Beersheva, literally
sprung from the sands about four kilometers from the Biblical site
of Beersheva where archeological excavations have uncovered some vestiges
– pottery, stone and metal tools and especially some ivory statuettes
– which date back to the Bronze Age.