"Naqab" redirects here. For places in Iran, seeNaqab, Iran. For the 1955 film, seeNaqab (film). For the light machine gun, seeIWI Negev. For the nomadic Arab tribes, seeNegev Bedouin.
In October 2012, global travel guide publisherLonely 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.[4][5]
The Negev (red), Israel's parts of the Judaean Mountains (salmon) and Judaean Desert (pink) on a map of Israel
The origin of the wordNegev is from theHebrew root denoting 'dry'; in theHebrew Bible, the wordNegev is also used for the direction 'south'. Some English-language translations use the spellingNegeb.
The Negev mentioned in theBible (seebelow) consisted only of the northernmost part of the modern Israeli Negev, with thesemiaridArad-Beersheba Valley defined as "the eastern (biblical) Negev".[6]
In Arabic, the Negev is known asan-Naqab oran-Naqb ('the [mountain] pass'),[7][8] 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.[9]
The Negev contains the oldest discovered surface on Earth, with an approximate age of 1.8 million years.[10][11] During thePleistocene, 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 yearsBP, during a time interval roughly corresponding to theLast Glacial Period, the Negev was significantly more humid than today.[12] It covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km2 (5,000 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 theSinai Peninsula, and whose eastern border is theArabah valley. The Negev has a number of interesting cultural and geological features. Among the latter are three enormous, craterlikemakhteshim (box canyons), which are unique to the region:Makhtesh Ramon,HaMakhtesh HaGadol, andHaMakhtesh HaKatan.
The Negev is a rocky desert. It is a melange of brown, rocky, dusty mountains interspersed bywadis (dry riverbeds with plants that flower briefly after rain) and deep craters. It can be split into five different ecological regions: northern, western and central Negev, the high plateau and theArabah Valley. The northern Negev, orMediterranean zone, receives 300 mm (12 in) of rain annually and has fairly fertile soil. The western Negev receives 250 mm (9.8 in) of rain per year, with light and partially sandy soil. Sanddunes can reach heights of up to 30 metres (98 ft) here. Home to the city ofBeersheba, the central Negev has an annual precipitation of 200 mm (7.9 in) and is characterised by impervious soil, known asloess, allowing minimum penetration of water with greater soil erosion and water runoff.
The high plateau area ofNegev Mountains/Ramat HaNegev (Hebrew:רמת הנגב,The Negev Heights) stands between 370 metres (1,210 ft) and 520 metres (1,710 ft) above sea level with extreme temperatures in summer and winter. The area receives 100 mm (3.9 in) of rain per year, with inferior and partially salty soil. TheArabah Valley along the Jordanian border stretches 180 km (110 mi) from Eilat in the south to the tip of theDead Sea in the north. TheArabah Valley is very arid with barely 50 mm (2.0 in) of rain annually. It has inferior soil, in which little can grow without irrigation and special soil additives.
Of the threeAcacia species growing in high plateau of the Negev,Acacia pachyceras is the most cold-resistant.
Vegetation in the Negev is sparse, but certain trees and plants thrive there, among themAcacia,Pistacia,Retama,Urginea maritima andThymelaea.[13]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.
Tulips flowering in the Negev Mountains around early spring
Desert snails of the genusEuchondrus feed onendolithic lichens which live inside limestone rocks, converting rock and lichen into soil, and releasing between 22 and 27 milligrams of nitrogen per square metre of soil through their faeces.[22]
Like many areas in Israel and the rest of the Middle East, the Negev used to host in the distant past theAsiatic lion and theAsiatic cheetah until their complete extinction at the hands of humans in later centuries.[24]
The Negev region isarid (Eilat receives on average only 24 mm (0.94 in) of rainfall a year), receiving very little rain due to its location to the east of theSahara (as opposed to the Mediterranean, which lies to the west of Israel), and extreme temperatures due to its location31 degrees north. However the northernmost areas of the Negev, includingBeersheba, aresemi-arid. The usual rainfall total from June to October inclusive 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.[25]
According to Israeli archaeologists, in theHebrew Bible, the term Negev only relates to the northern, semi-arid part of what we call Negev today; of this, theArad-Beersheba Valley, which receives enough rain to permit agriculture and therefore sedentary occupation (the "desert fringe"), is accordingly defined as "the eastern (biblical) Negev".[6]
In the 9th century BC, development and expansion of mining in both the Negev andEdom (modern Jordan) coincided with the rise of theAssyrian Empire.[32]Beersheba was the region's capital and a centre for trade in the 8th century BCE.[32] Small settlements ofIsraelites in the areas around the capital existed between 1020 and 928 BCE.[32]
The 4th-century BC arrival of theNabateans resulted in the development of irrigation systems that supported new urban centres located along theNegev incense route atAvdat (Oboda),Mamshit (Mampsis),Shivta (Sobata),Haluza (Elusa), andNitzana (Nessana).[32][dubious –discuss] This at least was the prevailing theory, until more recent research showed that the earliest form of Nabataean agriculture in the Negev Highlands was only based on spring-water irrigation, with the much more extensive run-off water harvesting techniques using barrages and terraces apparently developing and being used only later, during the 4th-7th centuries AD, after the 3rd-century collapse of long-distance trade.[36]
The Nabateans controlled the trade on the spice route between their capitalPetra and the Gazan seaports. Nabatean currency and the remains of red and orangepotsherds, identified as a trademark of their civilisation, have been found along the route, remnants of which are also still visible.[32] Nabatean control of the Negev ended when theRoman Empire annexed their lands in 106 AD.[32] The population, largely comprising nomads, venerated deities such asDushara,Allat, and others.[32]
Byzantine rule in the 4th century introducedChristianity to the population.[32] Agriculture-based cities were established and the population grew exponentially.[32] As shown by the research conducted byMichael Evenari,novel techniques were employed, such as runoff rainwater collection and management systems, which harvested water from larger areas and directed it onto smaller plots.[37] This permitted the cultivation of plants with much higher water requirements than the given arid environment could provide for.[37] Evenari researched the ancient mechanisms, rediscovered the ratio of water collection area to cultivation area, and explained the various ancient techniques ofland amelioration, such aswadi terracing andflash-flood dams, and the features used for collecting and directing runoff water.[37] He thought that the creators of this elaborate systems had been theNabataeans,[37] a theory proved wrong by more recent studies, which dated the massive agricultural and demographic expansion in the area to the Byzantine period.[38] The older explanation for theTuleilat el-Anab, lit. 'grape mounds' phenomenon, has also been discarded: these large piles of rocks probably served two purposes: removing the rocks from the cultivated plots and accelerating the erosion and water transportation oftopsoil from the runoff collection area onto those plots.[39]
Along with Avdat (Oboda), Mamshit (Mampsis), Shivta (Sobata), Haluza (Elusa), and Nitzana (Nessana), the settlements atRehovot-in-the-Negev/Ruheibeh (the second largest by population of the Byzantine-era "Negev towns"[40]) andSaadon are also significant for this period.[41][42]
A massive increase in grape production in the northwestern Negev for the requirements of the wine industry was noted for the early 6th century, documented by studying ancient refuse mounds at Shivta,Elusa andNessana.[38] There is a sharp peak in the presence of grape pips and broken "Gaza jars" used to export wine and otherLevantine goods from the port of Gaza (see "Gaza wine"), after a slower increase during the fourth and fifth centuries, and followed in the mid-6th century by a sudden decrease.[38] This was when two major calamities struck theByzantine Empire and large parts of the world: theLate Antique Little Ice Age (536-545), caused by huge volcanic eruptions in the world, with the resultingextreme weather events of 535–536; and in the 540s the first outbreak ofbubonic plague in theOld World, known as theJustinianic Plague.[38] It seems likely that these two events resulted in a near-cessation of international trade with luxury goods such as Gaza wine, grape production in the Negev settlements again giving way to subsistence farming focusing onbarley andwheat.[38] Repeated earthquakes hit the region during the Byzantine period, with numerous revetment walls added to buildings to support them against collapse; a large 7th-century seismic event led to the abandonement of Avdat and Rehovot-in-the-Negev.[40][41]
This recent analysis of newly-obtained data has proved the previously widely-accepted theory wrong, namely that theMuslim conquest, which occurred a century after these events, and specifically the Muslim ban on alcoholic beverages, was the cause of the decline of the wine industry in the Negev.[38] In Nessana, the number of grape pips is even seen to increase again during the Early Islamic period, probably due to theneeds of a local Christian monastery.[38]
This disappearance of the wine industry from the semi-arid northern Negev shows that it was technically possible to sustain it over centuries, but that the grapemonoculture was economically unsustainable in the long run[38] due to its dependence on empire-wide trading networks, which required stability and prosperity over a vast territory.
The southern Negev saw a flourishing of economic activity during the 8th to 10th or 11th centuries.[43] Six Islamic settlements have been found in the vicinity of modernEilat, along with copper and gold mines and stone quarries, and a sophisticated irrigation system and road network.[43] The economic centre was the port of Ayla (Aqaba).[43]
In 1871, the first scientifically accurate map of the Negev byE. H. Palmer was published in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey of Palestine and thePalestine Exploration Fund. The red dotted lines have been overlaid to show the modern borders that apply today.
Nomadic tribes ruled the Negev largely independently and with a relative lack of interference for the next thousand years.[32] What is known of this time is largely derived from oral histories and folk tales of tribes from theWadi Musa and Petra areas in present-dayJordan.[32] 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.'[33]
In 1900, theOttoman Empire established an administrative centre for southernSyria at Beersheba including schools and a railway station.[32] The authority of the tribal chiefs over the region was recognised by the Ottomans.[32] A railway connected it to the port ofRafah. In 1914, the Ottoman authorities estimated the nomadic population at 55,000.[44]
A map considered by the British Cabinet in 1918 suggested that the Negev could be included in either Palestine or Egypt.[45]
The 1916Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France placed the Negev in Area B, "Arab state or states" under British patronage.[46] The Negev was appropriated from the Ottoman army by British forces during 1917 and became part ofMandatory Palestine.
In 1922, the Bedouin component of the population was estimated at 72,898 out of a total of 75,254 for the Beersheba sub-district.[44] The 1931 census estimated that the population of the Beersheba sub-district was 51,082.[47] This large decrease was considered to be an artifact of incorrect enumeration methods used in 1922.[44] An Arabic history of tribes around Beersheba, published in 1934 records 23 tribal groups.[48]
Most of the Negev was earmarked by the November 1947 UN Partition Plan for the future Jewish state. During the 1947–49 War of Independence, Israel secured its sovereignty over the Negev. In the early years of the state, it absorbed many of theJewish refugees from Arab countries, with the Israeli government setting up manydevelopment towns, such asArad,Sderot andNetivot. Since then, the Negev has also become home to many of theIsrael Defense Forces' major bases – a process accelerating in the past two decades.
With effect from 2010, the Negev was home to some 630,000 people, or 8.2% ofIsrael's population, even though it comprises over 55% of the country's area. 470,000 Negev residents (75% of the population) areJews, while 160,000 or 25% are Bedouin.[49] Of the Bedouin population (a demographic with a semi-nomadic tradition), 50% live inunrecognised villages, and 50% live in towns built for them by the Israeli government between the 1960s and 1980s; the largest of these isRahat.
The population of the Negev is expected to reach 1.2 million by 2025.[citation needed] It was projected that theBeersheba metropolitan area would reach a population of 1 million by 2020, andArad,Yeruham, andDimona would triple in size by 2025.[50][51]
A large part of the NegevBedouins inhabit small communities or villages. Israel has refused to recognise certain Bedouin villages that were founded after the establishment of the state. Under Israel's 2011-adopted and enacted Begin-Prawer plan – officially theBill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev – some Bedouins are being moved to newly created townships. Bedouin villages established without proper sanction after establishment of the state are illegal under Israeli law. They are consequently destroyed or threatened with destruction.[52][53] An Israeli court ruling in 2017 forced six residents to pay the cost of eight rounds of demolition to the state.[54]
Blueprint Negev is aJewish National Fund project introduced in 2005. The $600 million project is intended to attract 500,000 new Jewish residents to the Negev by improving transport infrastructure, establishing businesses, developing water resources and introducing programmes to protect the environment.[55] A planned artificial desert river, swimming pools and golf courses raised concerns among environmentalists.[56][57] Critics oppose those plans, calling instead for an inclusive plan for the green vitalisation of existing population centres, investment in Bedouin villages, a clean-up of toxic industries and development of job options for the unemployed.[58][59][60][61]
A majorIsrael Defense Forces training base is being constructed in the Negev to accommodate 10,000 army personnel and 2,500 civilian staff. Three more bases will be built by 2020 as part of a plan to vacate land and buildings in Tel Aviv and central Israel, and bring jobs and investment to the south.[62]
The Negev Desert and the surrounding area, including theArava Valley, are the sunniest parts of Israel and little of this land isarable, which is why it has become the centre of the Israeli solar industry.[63]David Faiman, an expert on solar energy, is of the opinion that Israel's future energy requirements could be met by building solar energy plants in the Negev. As director ofBen-Gurion National Solar Energy Center, he operates one of the largest solar dishes in the world.[64] Technically, however, the Arava is a separate desert with its own unique climate and ecology.
A 250 MW solar park inAshalim, an area in the northern Negev, theAshalim Power Station, produces 121 Megawatts of power, using solar mirrors and thermal water heating. It is currently the largest in Israel.
The Rotem Industrial Complex outside ofDimona, Israel, has dozens of solar mirrors that focus the sun's rays on a tower that in turn heats a water boiler to create steam, turning a turbine to create electricity. Luz II, Ltd., plans to use the solar array to test new technology for the three new solar plants to be built in California, USA forPacific Gas and Electric Company.[65][66][67]
Yatir Forest 2005, produced byYatir Winery in the Negev
Vines have been planted in the Negev since ancient times. In modern times, vineyards have been established in the northern Negev hills using innovative computerised irrigation methods.Carmel Winery was the first of the major wineries to plant vineyards in the Negev and operates a boutique winery at RamatArad. Tishbi has vineyards atSde Boker and Barkan grows its grapes inMitzpe Ramon.[68]Yatir Winery is a winery inTel Arad. Its vineyards are on a hill 900 metres above sea level on the outskirts ofYatir Forest.[69] Carmey Avdat is Israel's first solar-powered winery.[70]
The Negev is home to hazardous infrastructures that includeNegev Nuclear Research Centernuclear reactor, 22 agrochemical and petrochemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, quarries, a toxic waste incinerator atNe'ot Hovav, cell towers, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and two rivers of open sewage.[71]
In 2005, the Tel Aviv municipality was accused of dumping waste in the Negev at theDudaim dump [he].[72] The Manufacturers Association of Israel established an authority in 2005 to move 60 industrial enterprises active in the Tel Aviv region to the Negev.[73]
"Negev Guardian" (2005), 16 m tall environmental statue by Emilio Mogilner next toRamat Hovav industrial zone, protesting against pollution
In 1979, theRamat Hovav toxic waste facility was established inWadi el-Na'am because the area was perceived as invulnerable to leakage. However, within a decade, cracks were found in the rock beneath Ramat Hovav.[71] In 2004, the Israeli Ministry of Health releasedBen Gurion University research findings describing the health problems in a 20 km (12 mi) vicinity of Ramat Hovav. The study, funded in large part by Ramat Hovav, found higher rates of cancer and mortality for the 350,000 people in the area. Prematurely released to the media by an unknown source, the preliminary study was publicly discredited;[74] However, its final conclusions – that Bedouin and Jewish residents near Ramat Hovav are significantly more susceptible than the rest of the population to miscarriages, severe birth defects, and respiratory diseases – passed a peer review several months later.[75]
^Biger described this meeting as follows: "Sovereignty over the Arava, from the south of theDead Sea to Aqaba, was also discussed. Philby agreed, in Trans-Jordan's name, to give up the western bank of Wadi Arava (and thus all of the Negev area). Nevertheless, a precise borderline was still not determined along the territories of Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Philby's relinquishment of the Negev was necessary, because the future of this area was uncertain. In a discussion regarding the southern boundary, the Egyptian aspiration to acquire the Negev area was presented. On the other hand the southern part of Palestine belonged, according to one of the versions, to the sanjak (district) of Ma'an within the vilayet (province) of Hejaz. King Hussein of Hijaz demanded to receive this area after claiming that a transfer action, to add it to the vilayet ofSyria (A-Sham) was supposed to be done in 1908. It is not clear whether this action was completed. Philby claimed that Emir Abdullah had his father's permission to negotiate over the future of the sanjak of Ma'an, which was actually ruled by him, and that he could therefore 'afford to concede' the area west of the Arava in favour of Palestine. This concession was made following British pressure and against the background of the demands of the Zionist Organization for direct contact between Palestine and the Red Sea. It led to the inclusion of the Negev triangle in Palestine's territory, although this area was not considered as part of the country in the many centuries that preceded the British occupation."[1]
^abBeit-Arieh, Itzhaq (1999)."Introduction: Settlement".Tel Ira: a stronghold in the biblical Negev in the Eastern Negev. The Emery and Clare Yass Publications in Archaeology: Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology. Tel Aviv University.ISBN965-440-008-1. Retrieved11 May 2024.
^Sharon, Moshe (1997)."'Aqabah (Ailah)".Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae. Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik. Leiden & Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 89–90.ISBN9789004108332.Archived from the original on 23 November 2015. Retrieved1 May 2015.In fact, there are two mountain passes through which the road of Aylah has to cross. The western one crosses the mountain ridge to the west of the gulf, and through it passes the main road from Egypt which cuts through the whole width of Sinai, coming from Cairo via Suez. This mountain pass is also called 'Aqabat Aylah, or as it is better known, "Naqb al-'Aqabah" or "Ras an-Naqb."
^Meiri, Shai; Belmaker, Amos; Berkowic, Daniel; Kazes, Kesem; Maza, Erez; Bar-Oz, Guy; Dor, Roi (21 March 2019). "A checklist of Israeli land vertebrates".Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution.65 (1–2):43–70.doi:10.1163/22244662-20191047.
^abFinkelstein, Israel; Perevolotsky, Avi (1990). "Processes of Sedentarization and Nomadization in the History of Sinai and the Negev".Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (279):67–88.doi:10.2307/1357210.JSTOR1357210.
^abKorzhenkov, Andrey M.; Mazor, Emanuel (9 May 2017). "Archaeoseismological Damage Patterns at the Ancient Ruins at Rehovot-ba-Negev, Israel".Archäologischer Anzeiger:75–92.doi:10.34780/0at4-6147.
^abcUzi Avner and Jodi Magness (1998). "Early Islamic settlement in the Southern Negev".Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.310 (310):39–57.doi:10.2307/1357577.JSTOR1357577.S2CID163609232.
^abcPalestine, Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922, October 1922, J.B. Barron, Superintendent of the Census, pages 4,7
^Map fromCAB 24/72/7Archived 2016-11-07 at theWayback Machine: "Maps illustrating the Settlement of Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula", forming an annex to:CAB 24/72/6Archived 2016-11-07 at theWayback Machine, a British Cabinet memorandum on "The Settlement of Turkey and the Arablan Peninsula"
^Biger, Gideon (2004).The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947. RoutledgeCurzon. p. 64.
^Census of Palestine 1931, Volume I. Palestine Part I, Report. Alexandria, 1933, p49.
^Palestine Exploration Quarterly. (October 1937 & January 1938)Notes on the Bedouin Tribes of Beersheba District. by S. Hillelson. Translations fromA History of Beersheba and the Tribes thereof (Ta'rikh Bir al-Saba' wa qaba'iliha). by 'Arif al-'Arif.
^Orenstein, Daniel; Hamburg, Steven (November 28, 2005)."The JNF's Assault on the Negev".The Jerusalem Report. watsoninstitute.org. Archived fromthe original on October 19, 2007. RetrievedAugust 7, 2008.
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