THE NEGEB
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sut,—As one who has recently worked and travelled for eleven months in all in the Negeb, officially called the Southern District of Palestine, I feel that some of the state- ments in Professor G. R. Driver's article, "Land for the Jews," need comment.
It is a strange understatement to say that part of the region is hilly. The chain of the Judaean Highlands continues south through the whole length of the Negeb, and attains a height of r,5oo to 2,50o feet above sea-level. Its eastern scarp is very steep and broken, and receives very little rain. More than half of the total area of the Negeb is thus no more capable of supporting a settled population than the Desert of Judaea that the visitor sees before him as he looks down from the Mount of Olives towards the Dead Sea.
It is by no means certain that the rainfall of the Negeb is not rather less than it was in historic times. The principle of post-glacial climatic fluctuations in North-Western Europe is readily admitted. They are inferred as late as the Roman period ; and it is unlikely that the Mediterranean was not affected by such changes. In a marginal region like the Negeb the smallest change in the rainfall would have a marked effect on human geography. Official statistics give the present average annual rainfall at Auja Hafir at five inches only. The rainfall is greater to the north and west, less to the south and east, and everywhere in the Negeb there is great variation from one year to another. It is not correct to cite Major Jarvis's successful experiment at cultivation in Wadi Qadirat as an example of what could be done throughout the region, for the combination of a cultivable valley and a perennial water supply there is unusually favourable. Colonel T. E. Lawrence and Sir Leonard Woolley were young and not in- fallible men, and spent only a short time in the district, before publishing their report The Wilderness of Zin. I do not think they took sufficient account of the progressive erosion by wind and water of much cultivable land since the Byzan- tine period. The Department for Land Development of the Mandatory Government was actively exploring the agricultural
possibilities of the Negeb in the winter of 1937-38. It would be wise to await its report before either raising or rebuffing hopes of extensive settlement there.
Estimates of the present population of the Negeb vary fantastically. That of Arif el Arif, the Governor of the Southern District, who knows the Negeb perhaps better than any living man, greatly exceeds Professor Driver's figure of 5,000. In any case, all who know the country will agree that such words as " nomad " and " Bedouin " should not be used of the Arab inhabitants of the region without qualification. Between the settled cultivator and the true Bedouin there is a third class, to which most of the people of the Negeb belong. They are the legal owners of lands which they plough and sow and harvest yearly ; at other seasons they are com- pelled to travel to find grazing for their flocks and herds. One of the most unpleasing features of the recent colonisation of Palestine has been the indifference of official Zionism to the future of the small cultivators they have displaced. It would be a great wrong to suppose that the Arabs of the Negeb are landless nomads who could properly be displaced, and dangerous to suppose that they would go willingly. The poorer the peasant, the more desperately he will cling to his holding. Is it too much to ask Zionists and their friends to study the Negeb in greater detail and at first hand, and then to tell us what provision they would make in their scheme for the present Arab cultivators of the district?—
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