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hills approach to within a few hundred yards of the sea. Beyond Carmel the plain widens again, but in this area it is marshy and malarial.
The second strip consists of two distinct mountainous regions divided sharply by the Plain of Esdraelon. ‘To the north of that Plain are the mountains of Galilee, extending beyond the Syrian frontier and rising at Jebel Jermak to a height of 3,934 feet above sea-level; to the south are the mountains of Samaria and Judea which in places reach heights little less than those of Galilee. Most of this second strip of country is desolate and stony, but at irregular intervals there occur stretches of fertile land capable of deep tillage.
The Plain of Esdraelon, which cuts so sharply through the mountain system of Palestine, is roughly triangular in shape. Though the soil is here of a heavier and more clayey texture than that of the coastal plain, Esdraelon is proverbially fertile and is especially suitable for cereal production.
The third and eastern strip of country is the Jordan Valley —a natural depression which, starting from sea-level in the extreme north of the country, falls gradually to a depth of 1,300 feet below that level at the Dead Sea about 100 miles to the south.
This valley is the third large block of fertile land in Palestine ; the others being the Plain of Esdraelon and the maritime plain. But climate naturally varies with altitude and, whereas the plains are sub-tropical and humid and the mountainous region is drier and more temperate, much of the Jordan Valley is at times oppressively hot, the rainfall is slight, and it seems doubt- ful whether the fertile tracts within it can support a large agri- cultural population.
In addition to Jerusalem, which is situated in the midst of the hills of Judea, the principal towns of Palestine are Haifa, a port in the north at the entrance to the Plain of Esdraelon, Jaffa, another port which lies some 40 miles west-north-west of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv which is contiguous to Jaffa. Of these, Jerusalem has now a small majority of Jewish in- habitants, in Haifa the people are predominantly Arab though there is a large Jewish population, Tel Aviv is entirely a Jewish township now containing nearly 40,000 inhabitants almost all of whom have entered the country since the war. In Jaffa a large majority of the people are Arabs.
Other important towns where the population consists of both Arabs and Jews are Hebron, 20 miles to the south of Jerusalem, Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Safed, a remote town in mountainous country in the extreme north of Palestine. Nablus which is situated in the hills of Samaria, 40 miles due north from Jerusalem, is an exclusively Arab town.
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