Word: negeb
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Israel struck oil last week, right on the fringe of the Negeb desert and only six miles from the Gaza strip. Rushing to the spot from Tel Aviv, Premier Designate David Ben-Gurion clambered down into a pit and dug to watch the first flow of the stuff. "Mazel Tov [Congratulations]," he murmured to the drillers. "When can we start to use the stuff?" Development Minister Dov Joseph hurried off by car to the Weizmann Institute of Science 25 miles away with a pop-bottleful to be assayed...
...main reasons the Israelis fought so hard to conquer the barren Negeb in the Palestinian war was that they were sure they could find oil there...
...Gaza strip is a geographic absurdity perpetuated by hate and pride. Ever since Israel's warriors swept south in 1948 to the Negeb desert, Gaza has stood as a defiant outpost in which Egyptian soldiers held out against Zion to the day of armistice. All around the 5-by-25-mile sand strip, a stealthy border war has since been waged, and blood spilled almost nightly...
Even as the Security Council deliberated, a wedding was taking place in the village of Patish, one of the concrete settlements planted by the Israelis in the barren Negeb. It was midnight, and the wedding guests were still dancing outside the bridegroom's house. By the light of a glaring carbide lamp, the guests whirled and stomped to the wailing music of flute and cymbal. The watchdogs had been barking at the excitement all evening, and nobody noticed when they barked a little louder...
Most students of Bible history believe that the Negeb, Israel's southern desert, was an uninhabited wilderness when Abraham (a middle Bronze Age man) came to Beersheeba about 1500 B.C. One short reference puzzled them. The book of Genesis (14:6) refers to Horites (cave dwellers) who lived "by the wilderness" and were smitten by Chedorlaomer, King of Elam. But until the fall of Perrot's man, no trace of the Horites had been found...