Palestine: Its Resources and Suitability for Colonization Author(S): E

Palestine: Its Resources and Suitability for Colonization Author(s): E. W. G. Masterman Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jul., 1917), pp. 12-26 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1779674 Accessed: 07-05-2016 17:52 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 132.203.227.61 on Sat, 07 May 2016 17:52:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 12 PALESTINE: ITS RESOURCES the last three years had the advantage of sitting by Dr. Keltie's side, if not at his feet, he will have a successor who will render to the Society and the Council assistance similar in quality to that we have received from his two remarkable predecessors. In Sir Thomas Holdich, who has been nominated by the Council as my successor, you may hope to find a President who will be attentive to the interests of the Society and worthily maintain its great reputation abroad and at home. By profession a Royal Engineer and a survey officer he has done distinguished work in two continents, both in Asia?in India and Afghanistan?and in the demarcation of South American boundaries. He has put his store of knowledge not only into Government maps but also into popular books. He has had, as one of our Vice-Presidents, a long experience of the affairs of-the Society, and has shown in them qualities that should ensure his success in the supreme post which forms the appropriate crown of a life devoted to geographical work. I have not the smallest doubt that in his case, as in my own, he will find his labour lightened by the constant aid and sympathy of his fellow-officers and the Council. I should like my last words from this Chair to be an expression of my own very deep sense of the way in which I have been helped, my doubts resolved and my deficiencies supplied, by my colleagues and particularly by my predecessors in office, Sir George Goldie and Major Darwin. I shall look back in the future both with gratitude and pieasure on my three years of office as a time of uninterrupted progress and harmony, a time during which we have all?-including our excellent staff, among whom I count many old friends?done our best to recognize the novel conditions forced on us and to place the experience, energy, and resources of the Society at the service of the State in the great crisis in the history of our country and of the world which has overtaken us, in the great struggle for Liberty and Civilization against a foe who has thrown a slur on the name of Humanity. PALESTINE: ITS RESOURCES AND SUITABILITY FOR COLONIZATION E. W. G. Masterman, M.D.r F.R.C.S., D.P.H. Read at the Meeting ofthe Society 19 March 1917. For map see p. 52. PALESTINE, " The Holy or Land," what though we are aaccustomed very definite to describegeographical in atlases unity asin our minds, has no political existence to-day. Under the Turkish Govern? ment Jerusalem and its environs, a district roughly corresponding with the Judaea of New Testament times, is an independent Sandjak under a Mute- sarrif. Western Palestine, north of this, is incorporated into the Vilayet This content downloaded from 132.203.227.61 on Sat, 07 May 2016 17:52:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ?...n,^_?**- . J^i . AMMAN FROM THE CITADEL. GRECO-ROMAN TEMPLE ON HILLSIDE, THE ODEUM ON EXTREME LEFT MODERN INHABITANTS OF AMMAN. TWO TYPICAL CIRCASSIANS IN FRONT This content downloaded from 132.203.227.61 on Sat, 07 May 2016 17:52:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE THERMAE AT AMMAN. IN THE FOREGROUND A CIRCASSIAN CART THE JABBOK AT AMMAN, WITH RUINED BASILICA AND REMAINS OF VAULTING OVER STREAM This content downloaded from 132.203.227.61 on Sat, 07 May 2016 17:52:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms AND SUITABILITY FOR COLONIZATION 13 of Beirut, and Eastern Palestine is included in the Vilayet of Suriya (Syria), which stretches from Hama in the north to the Hidjaz, of which Damascus is the seat of government. It would almost seem as if such an arrangement were deliberately made to obliterate the claims of Palestine to survival as one land. For all Christendom, however, Palestine still exists, a land unique in history and religious sentiment, and at the present time a critical and pressing political problem. At the outset it is as well to define what we mean by Palestine. It no longer means as once " the land of the Philistines," and always has included very much which the Philistines never held. The district we describe as Palestine was never in its entirety held by the Hebrews for any length of time. The united kingdoms of Judah and Israel correspond roughly with what I may call the ideal boundaries. To the west lies the Mediter? ranean ; to the east the great Syrian desert; southward the land merges into the desert of Sinai, where a purely artificial frontier divides it off from Egyptian territory. The northern boundary has never been clearly defined. The "holy land" of Judaism, within which it is a merit to be buried, does not extend to Akka in the north. This is true to ancient history, as Akka was the most southerly of the towns of Phoenicia in the same way that Dar, 25 miles further south, appears to have been the most northerly point reached by the Philistines. A more or less scientific frontier, which was recognized by the surveyors of the Palestine Explora? tion Fund in making their great map, exists at the great gorge of the Kasimiya River, where it runs from east almost due westward to the sea. A line drawn due east of this reaches Banias?probably the ancient Dan itself?long accepted as the northern point of Palestine, and then skirting to the south of Hermon it runs along the water-parting between the Damascus oasis on the north and the great plain of Hauran to the south. This makes a fairly natural frontier. Damascus does not by nature belong to Palestine, and has never in history gone with it at any period. The area of this entire region is roughly about 10,000 square miles. These boundaries correspond with the idealized limits of Canaan as divided among the twelve tribes, with the possessions of the Hebrew kings in the days of their greatness, and with the Palestine of New Testament times. More strictly Tyre, which is south of the Kasimiya River, remained attached to Phoenicia, and the ancient boundary was at the steep headland where the Djebel el Mushakka breaks out into the sea at Ras en Nakura, the historic " Ladder of Tyre." A Palestine so defined is consistent with history, and it includes in one all those sites which are associated with the three Semitic religions which have arisen more or less in connection with it. It is needless to lay stress upon the Biblical associations of the Christian with the land. The endless stream of pilgrims and tourists which in all ages have poured into Palestine, the archaeological investigations which in recent years have been conducfed there, and the religious establishments of the Eastern, Western, This content downloaded from 132.203.227.61 on Sat, 07 May 2016 17:52:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 14 PALESTINE: ITS RESOURCES and the Protestant Churches which have covered the land, all testify to the deep and, one may say, ever-increasing interest which the land holds for the Christian. Unfortunately, this sentiment and reverence for the land has made, and still makes, its future a thorny problem, and the rivalry of the Churches is nowhere seen to greater disadvantage than in this land. Secondly, the Hebrews, although they actually held Palestine for only a matter of a few centuries, and have had no foot of it to call their own for over eighteen hundred years,* still look longingly to the little land that was so intimately associated with their earlier history. The movement of Zionism?now so familiar to every one?has for its object the settlement of some representatives of their race in their ancient land, to found there a religious and literary centre and a home for those whom persecution has driven out of other lands. There is a third religion which claims, in parts at least of this land, an interest as great as the Christian and the Jew. Whether Mahommed ever actually visited Jerusalem is more than doubtful; but to the orthodox Moslem the Haram at El Kuds?the scene of some of the Prophet's visions?is only second in sanctity to Mecca and Medina. There is no doubt whatever as to the deep and universal reverence paid to Jerusalem ?and in a less degree to Hebron?in the world of Islam.

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