Judaean Desert Judaean Desert The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert ( "Midbar Yehuda", both "Desert of Judah" or "Judaean Desert"; "Sahara Yahudan") is a desert in Israel and the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El, and is marked by natural terraces with escarpments. It ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. The Judaean Desert is crossed by numerous wadis from northeast to southeast and has many ravines, most of them deep, from 1,200 feet in the
Negev Bedouin Israeli government in the 1950s and 1960s to a restricted zone in the northeast corner of the Negev, called the "Siyagh" ( , an Arabic word that can be translated as the "permitted area") made up of in 10% of the Negev desert in the northeast. In 1951, the United Nations reported the deportation of about 7,000 Negev Bedouin to Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai, but many returned undetected. The new government failed to issue the Bedouin identity cards until 1952 and deported thousands of Bedouin who remained within the new borders. Deportation continued into the late 1950s, as