Palestine

PALESTINE, a territory administered by the British Gov ernment under a mandate from the League of Nations, which came officially into operation in 1923. It is bounded on the north by the French sphere of Syria, as settled by the Franco British convention of 1920, on the west by the Mediterranean, and on the south by Egyptian and Hejaz territory. On the east is Transjordan (q.v.) separated from Palestine roughly by the Jordan valley and the Red sea, but included in the British man date. Palestine stretches through only about 2 degrees of latitude, being roughly 140 m. long and about 23 m. wide in the north and about 8o m. in the south. Its area (excluding Transjordan) is just over 9,000 sq.m., being slightly larger than that of Wales. The total population was estimated in 1914 at 689,281; at the official census in 1931 it was 1,035,821, of whom 759,712 were Muslim, 174,6m Jews, 95,398 Christians, 9,148 Druses, 182 Samaritans, 35o Bahais and the remainder comprised Sikhs, Hin dus, Metawilehs, and persons professing no religion. Since the promulgation of the Immigration Ordinance (1920) there has been a large immigration of Jews.

There is no ancient geographical term that covers all the area now known as Palestine. Until the period of the Roman occu pation the region was subdivided into independent provinces or kingdoms, different at different times (such as Philistia, Canaan, Judah, Israel, Bashan, etc.), but never united under one collec tive designation. The extension of the name of Palestine beyond the limits of Philistia proper is not older than the Byzantine period. The country is at present (1929) divided into two dis tricts: Jerusalem—southern, and Haifa—northern.

Physical Features.

Palestine forms part of an ancient plateau rising eastward from a sandy shore to an elevated tableland. A characteristic feature is that it is deeply fractured along cer tain lines, running from north to south. Secondary fracture lines, trending north-west to south-east, cross the main fractures, and are somewhat replaced east of Jordan by others running almost east and west. The main fractures determine the direction of the coast, with evidences of sunken land north of Carmel and of uplift along the sandy shores to the south. The steady rise of the plateau from the coast eastwards is broken by the greatest fracture line of all : that which forms the Jordan valley and the Dead sea. A belt of land has sunk deeply between a series of parallel north to south fractures, which may be followed both north and south of Palestine. The fracture is continued north

wards from the Sea of Galilee between Hermon (9,383 ft.) and Lebanon (6,070 feet). The depression deepens southwards from the Sea of Galilee down to its deepest point in the Dead sea, some 2,600 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean.

Another stretch of lowland, forming the Vale of Esdraelon, passing towards the Jordan valley through the narrower Vale of Jezreel, represents one of the main secondary fracture lines with its general north-west to south-east direction. As a route from early times it has played an important part in the history of the country—at one time the highway of commerce, at another, the highway of war. These secondary fracture lines may be traced south of Esdraelon in the courses of those streams that flow, mostly in the rainy season, from the plateau's edge to the sea. East of Jordan, Arnon and Jabbok and Yarmuk are the main rivers. They tend to follow an east-to-west course, falling into Jordan. The Yarmuk was the northern limit of early Israelite life ; to the north lay the Hauran cornfields under the influence of Damascus in the days of its greatness. Between Jabbok and Yarmuk was the land of Gilead that was the refuge of Israel in the days of distress (2 Sam. ii.).

The much fractured plateau of rocks of pre-carboniferous and possibly Archean age is generally concealed by later deposits, but these ancient rocks are exposed along the eastern margin of the Wadi-el-tAraba at the foot of the plateau of Edom. Similar rocks attain a greater extension towards the south, forming nearly the whole of Sinai and the hills of the east side of the Gulf of `Aqaba. Owing to the extensive faulting in the neighbourhood of Jordan, the western (downthrow) side (forming Palestine) is made up of the newer beds (Upper Cretaceous and later) while east of Jordan the older rocks, sometimes down to the Archean floor, are exposed at the foot of the plateau. The Upper Cre taceous, represented by limestones with bands of chert, covers by far the greater part of the country, capping the plateau lands of Moab and Edom, and forming most of the high land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. It is overlaid towards the west by similar limestones, which contain nummulites and belong to the Eocene, and are followed near the coast by the calcareous sandstones of Philistia of the same date.