Dear Editor,
Today, the desert blooms just as Isaiah 35:1,2 said it would.
The Israelis have made this happen and, coincidentally, flowers are Israels second largest export.
During the time the Turks controlled this area, they taxed the people according to the number of trees they had on their land. Consequently, landowners cut them down.
It’s been stated that there was a time when there were only around 1,000 trees throughout the land-today there are millions upon millions.
The Turkish Ottoman Empire ruled the entire Middle East region from 1516 to 1917. During this 400 years they ruled the land of Palestine (Israel) it was sparsely populated, mostly by nomads. Most of land was owned by absentee landlords.
The land was widely neglected with eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malaria-infected marshes.
Ancient irrigation systems and terraces had crumbled.
Today, more than 40 percent of Israels crops are grown in what was once a desert and they grow more than enough to feed their population. In 1948 they cultivate around 405,000 acres. Today it is over a million acres.
Mark Twain, who visited in 1867, described it as a “desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, friends of worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It was barren, a wasteland.”
The Jewish people began to return top this land in the late 1800s paying exorbitant prices per acre for the swampy, rocky, sandy land that was undesirable for cultivating. In 1944 Jews paid $1,000 to $1,100 per acre while rich black soil in Iowa was selling for $110 per acre.
After Israel became a state in 1948, Jews began their immigration in earnest and began to develop the region. Many Arabs from the Ottoman Empire rushed into Palestine to get jobs.
Most of todays “Palestinians” are descendants of these Arab newcomers.
The Arab League State today have 21 separate Arab states for a total of 5,000,000 square miles. Israel is one state consisting of only 8,000 square miles.
Some Rabbi’s say that the land going into the decline that it did was a blessing from god, because if it had continued to flourish it wouldn’t have been virtually empty when the Jewish people began to return home. An interesting thought.
“In 1914 before World War I, the Jewish residents in Israel was 60,000. Today the population in Israel is 7.2 million.”
It takes about seven hours to drive from the farthest point in the north to the sourthernmost point.
From east to west, it takes about two hours at the widest point. Isreal is about the size of New Jersey.
LaVern Reinhardt,
Great Bend