Nisi Dominus: A Survey of the Palestine Controversy

PALESTINE, an Oriental country about the size of Wales, is a somewhat arid prolongation of Syria to the south. The cultivable land consists of a coastal plain backed by a ridge of hills, beyond and parallel to which the river Jordan flows along a profound cleft until it reaches the Dead Sea, lying more than 1000 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. The southern half of the country is desert. The cultivable area can be crossed in a car from west to east in two hours and from north to south in five hours. For more than a thousand years the country has formed an integral part of the Arabic-speaking world. This comprises the countries of Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, and Egypt, which are to-day striving to create one great cultural and economic unit. In the Middle Ages an attempt was made by the Latin Christian Powers to detach Palestine from this unity and to bring it into the polity of Western European states. This attempt, known as the Crusades, was decisively defeated after several generations of fighting.