The Linking of Egypt and Palestine

Extract

In the last four years, excavation has been going on in an untouched region, the desert border of Palestine, within a walk of the Egyptian frontier. All the district beyond Gaza was formerly raided so often from the south that it was unsafe; now we can live eighteen miles out in the wilderness, surrounded by Arabs, without any defences, and never have a single dispute or trouble. Such is the result of the Occupation. Lawrence and Woolley, with surveyors, made a map of the region down to Kadesh Barnea and, on that map, half of the names survive which are listed in Joshua as the ‘uttermost cities of Judah’.