The Negev (Hebrew: ?????????, Tiberian vocalization: han-Né?e??; Arabic: ?????? an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. 205,810), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city of Eilat. It contains several development towns, including Dimona, Arad and Mitzpe Ramon, as well as a number of small Bedouin cities, including Rahat and Tel as-Sabi and Lakyah. 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.
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.
Although historically a separate region, the Negev was added to the proposed area of Mandatory Palestine, later to become Israel, on 10 July 1922, having been conceded by British representative St John Philby ”in Trans-Jordan’s name”.
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.
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Etymology; other names
The origin of the word 'negev' is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'. In the Bible, the word Negev is also used for the direction 'south'; some English-language translations use the spelling "Negeb".
In Arabic, the Negev is known as al-Naqab or an-Naqb ("the pass"), though it was not thought of as a distinct region until the demarcation of the Egypt-Ottoman frontier in the 1890s and has no traditional Arabic name.
During the British Mandate it was called Beersheba sub-district.
Geography
The Negev covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km² (4,700 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 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 300 mm of rain annually and has fairly fertile soils. The western Negev receives 250 mm of rain per year, with light and partially sandy soils. Sand dunes can reach heights of up to 30 metres here. Home to the city of Beersheba, the central Negev has an annual precipitation of 200 mm 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 (Hebrew: ??? ?????, The Negev Heights) stands between 370 metres and 520 metres above sea level with extreme temperatures in summer and winter. The area gets 100 mm of rain per year, with inferior and partially salty soils. The Arabah Valley along the Jordanian border stretches 180 km from Eilat in the south to the tip of the Dead Sea in the north. The Arabah Valley is very arid with barely 50 mm 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. A small population of Arabian leopards, an endangered animal in the Arabian peninsula, survives in the southern Negev. The Negev Tortoise (Testudo werneri) is a critically endangered species that currently lives only in the sands of the western and central Negev Desert. The Negev shrew (Crocidura ramona) is a species of mammal of the family Soricidae found only in Israel.Hyphaene thebaica or doum palm can be found in the Southern Negev. Evrona is the most northerly point in the world where this palm can be found.
Climate
The Negev region is arid (Eilat receives on average only 24 mm 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-arid. 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.
| Climate data for Beersheba | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 28.4 (83.1) |
31 (88) |
35.4 (95.7) |
40.9 (105.6) |
42.2 (108) |
46 (115) |
41.5 (106.7) |
40.5 (104.9) |
41.2 (106.2) |
39.6 (103.3) |
34 (93) |
31.4 (88.5) |
46 (115) |
| Average high °C (°F) | 16.7 (62.1) |
17.5 (63.5) |
20.1 (68.2) |
25.8 (78.4) |
29 (84) |
31.3 (88.3) |
32.7 (90.9) |
32.8 (91) |
31.3 (88.3) |
28.5 (83.3) |
23.5 (74.3) |
18.8 (65.8) |
25.7 (78.3) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 7.5 (45.5) |
7.6 (45.7) |
9.3 (48.7) |
12.7 (54.9) |
15.4 (59.7) |
18.4 (65.1) |
20.5 (68.9) |
20.9 (69.6) |
19.5 (67.1) |
16.7 (62.1) |
12.6 (54.7) |
8.9 (48) |
14.2 (57.6) |
| Record low °C (°F) | ?5 (23) |
?0.5 (31.1) |
2.4 (36.3) |
4 (39) |
8 (46) |
13.6 (56.5) |
15.8 (60.4) |
15.6 (60.1) |
13 (55) |
10.2 (50.4) |
3.4 (38.1) |
3 (37) |
?5 (23) |
| Average precipitation mm (inches) | 49.6 (1.953) |
40.4 (1.591) |
30.7 (1.209) |
12.9 (0.508) |
2.7 (0.106) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0.4 (0.016) |
5.8 (0.228) |
19.7 (0.776) |
41.9 (1.65) |
204.1 (8.035) |
| Average precipitation days | 9.2 | 8 | 6.4 | 2.6 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 1.8 | 4.6 | 7.5 | 41 |
| Source: Israel Meteorological Service | |||||||||||||
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