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Israel
Topography
The country is divided into four regions: the coastal plain,
the central hills, the Jordan Rift Valley, and the Negev Desert
. The Mediterranean coastal plain stretches from the Lebanese
border in the north to Gaza in the south, interrupted only by
Cape Carmel at Haifa Bay. It is about forty kilometers wide at
Gaza and narrows toward the north to about five kilometers at
the Lebanese border. The region is fertile and humid (historically
malarial) and is known for its citrus and viniculture. The plain
is traversed by several short streams, of which only two, the
Yarqon and Qishon, have permanent water flows.
East of the coastal plain lies the central highland region. In
the north of this region lie the mountains and hills of Upper
Galilee and Lower Galilee; farther to the south are the Samarian
Hills with numerous small, fertile valleys; and south of Jerusalem
are the mainly barren hills of Judea. The central highlands average
610 meters in height and reach their highest elevation at Mount
Meron, at 1,208 meters, in Galilee near Zefat (Safad). Several
valleys cut across the highlands roughly from east to west; the
largest is the Yizreel or Jezreel Valley (also known as the Plain
of Esdraelon), which stretches forty-eight kilometers from Haifa
southeast to the valley of the Jordan River, and is nineteen kilometers
across at its widest point.
East of the central highlands lies the Jordan Rift Valley, which
is a small part of the 6,500-kilometer-long Syrian-East African
Rift. In Israel the Rift Valley is dominated by the Jordan River,
Lake Tiberias (known also as the Sea of Galilee and to Israelis
as Lake Kinneret), and the Dead Sea. The Jordan, Israel's largest
river (322 kilometers long), originates in the Dan, Baniyas, and
Hasbani rivers near Mount Hermon in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains
and flows south through the drained Hula Basin into the freshwater
Lake Tiberias. Lake Tiberias is 165 square kilometers in size
and, depending on the season and rainfall, is at about 213 meters
below sea level. With a capacity estimated at 3 billion cubic
meters, it serves as the principal reservoir of the National Water
Carrier (also known as the Kinneret-Negev Conduit). The Jordan
River continues its course from the southern end of Lake Tiberias
(forming the boundary between the West Bank and Jordan) to its
terminus in the highly saline Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is 1,020
square kilometers in size and, at 399 meters below sea level,
is the lowest point in the world. South of the Dead Sea, the Rift
Valley continues in the Nahal HaArava (Wadi al Arabah in Arabic),
which has no permanent water flow, for 170 kilometers to the Gulf
of Aqaba.
The Negev Desert comprises approximately 12,000 square kilometers,
more than half of Israel's total land area. Geographically it
is an extension of the Sinai Desert, forming a rough triangle
with its base in the north near Beersheba (also seen as Beersheva),
the Dead Sea, and the southern Judean Hills, and it has its apex
in the southern tip of the country at Elat. Topographically, it
parallels the other regions of the country, with lowlands in the
west, hills in the central portion, and the Nahal HaArava as its
eastern border.
Data as of December 1988
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