What caused Israel to become a Desert before the Jews returned?

[White Israelite]

I was wondering what caused Israel and the middle east to become a desert? I've heard from history that Cairo at one time had lush gardens, Babylon supposedly had some of the most advanced water systems in the world and the Levant area (modern day lebanon, syria, Israel, Jordan) were part of the fertile crescent. I have heard that the Mongols that invaded in Iraq destroyed the river systems that Babylon had and this caused everything to fall apart, as for Israel I've heard rumors that the Romans threw salt on everything and this prevented anything from growing and that the soil was highly acidic. I'm curious how the Jews returning were able to grow crops and restore the land and what actually caused Israel to turn into a desert?

[muman613]

I was wondering what caused Israel and the middle east to become a desert? I've heard from history that Cairo at one time had lush gardens, Babylon supposedly had some of the most advanced water systems in the world and the Levant area (modern day lebanon, syria, Israel, Jordan) were part of the fertile crescent. I have heard that the Mongols that invaded in Iraq destroyed the river systems that Babylon had and this caused everything to fall apart, as for Israel I've heard rumors that the Romans threw salt on everything and this prevented anything from growing and that the soil was highly acidic. I'm curious how the Jews returning were able to grow crops and restore the land and what actually caused Israel to turn into a desert?

The answer is in the Torah... Hashem promised that the land would become unfertile during the exile and it would return to being fertile when the Jews returned....

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/7-wonders-of-jewish-history/

6) The Interdependency of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel

(TOP)

It has been prophesied in the Torah that the land of Israel was rich and fertile while the Jews were living there:

    “I have come down to rescue them from Egypt’s power. I will bring them out of that land, to a good, spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey…”
    (Exodus 3:8)

Even up until the time of Josephus (i.e. approximately 1300 years later), it was still very prosperous and fertile.

    For the whole area is excellent for crops or pasturage and rich in trees of every kind, so that by its fertility it invites even those least inclined to work on the land. In fact, every inch of it has been cultivated by the inhabitants and not a parcel goes to waste. It is thickly covered with towns, and thanks to the natural abundance of the soil, the many villages are so densely populated that the smallest of them has more than fifteen thousand inhabitants.
    (Josephus, The Jewish Wars; Book III 3:2 Penguin edition, p. 192)

And when they were exiled, it would become barren and desolate:

    “So devastated will I leave the land that your enemies who live there will be astonished… Your land will remain desolate, and your cities in ruins.”
    (Leviticus 26:32-33)

During the two thousand years of Israel’s exile from its Land, numerous empires have conquered the Land and countless wars were fought for its possession. And yet, astonishingly, no conqueror ever succeeded in permanently settling the Land or causing the deserts to blossom.

Mark Twain, who visited Israel in 1867, describes the Land of Israel:

    “We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given wholly to weeds - A silent, mournful expanse… A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action . The further we went the hotter the sun got and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became.”
    (“The Innocents Abroad” Vol. II)

Others make similar observations:

    Outside the walls of Jerusalem however we saw no living being, heard no living voice. We encountered that desolation and that deadly silence which we would have expected to find at the ruined gates of Pompey… A total eternal dread spell envelopes the city, the highways and the villages… the burial grounds of an entire people.
    Alfons de Lamartine, “Recollections of the East” Volume I London (1845) pg. 238 (Hebrew-French)

    Until today no people has succeeded in establishing national dominion in the land of Israel… No national unity or spirit of nationalism has acquired any hold there. The mixed multitude of itinerant tribes that managed to settle there did so on lease, as temporary residents. It seems that they await the return of the permanent residents of the land.

    Professor Sir John William Dosson in “Modern Science in Bible Lands” London (1888) Pp. 449-450

The Ramban comments on Leviticus 26:32

    Similarly, that which He stated here, and your enemies that shall dwell therein shall be desolate in it, constitutes a good tiding, proclaiming that during all our exiles, our Land will not accept our enemies. This also is a great proof and assurance to us, for in the whole inhabited part of the world one cannot find such a good and large Land which was always lived in and yet is as ruined as it is [today], for since the time that we left it, it has not accepted any nation or people, they all try to settle it, but to no avail.

The “land of milk and honey” turning into a desert, is a phenomenon unique in the annals of history.

[Meerkat]

a scientific explanation would still be interesting. probably because the jews only recently started drawing from the sea of Galilee in order to irrigate the rest of the country, im guessing the nitrogen cycle might also be involved, i am not sure though. just wait once we switch from a oil economy to a hydrogen economy, the water cycle will accelerate even further.

[muman613]

a scientific explanation would still be interesting. probably because the jews only recently started drawing from the sea of Galilee in order to irrigate the rest of the country, im guessing the nitrogen cycle might also be involved, i am not sure though. just wait once we switch from a oil economy to a hydrogen economy, the water cycle will accelerate even further.

But why only when the Jews are in the land... Scientifically it should work whenever any advanced peoples occupy the land...

[Meerkat]

But why only when the Jews are in the land... Scientifically it should work whenever any advanced peoples occupy the land...

advanced nations can oasify regions, its just really hard to do.

[muman613]

advanced nations can oasify regions, its just really hard to do.

What is supernatural about the land of Israel is that several advanced nations such as Rome {who possessed advanced irrigation knowledge} were unable to make the land flow... But shortly after the Jews returned to the land it again yielded its fruits...

[Yaakov Mendel]

What is supernatural about the land of Israel is that several advanced nations such as Rome {who possessed advanced irrigation knowledge} were unable to make the land flow... But shortly after the Jews returned to the land it again yielded its fruits...

The foreign nations that occupied Israel for so long did not love the land of Israel, only the Jews do, and they love her with such passion and faithfulness that they literally resurrected her.   

[Chai]

any before and afters ?

[Zelhar]

The muslims, after they had expelled the crusaders from the land, purposely desolated and deforested the land, especially the coastal area, so that it would be difficult for another crusade to take another foothold. Over the years the few muslims who lived on the land kept ruining it, deforestation, hunting, over grazing by nomad bedouins. The result was that the land became barren, or covered in deserts, or swamps.

Even today if you can notice that for the most parts the Shomron and Judean hills are bear whereas the parts that are under Israeli control like the hill country around Jerusalem, the Galilee etc. are again covered with forests or gardens.

Here is what British High Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis, suggested as his explanation in his book "Three deserts" (1936):

"The Arab is sometimes called the Son of the Desert, but, as Palmer said, this is a misnomer as in most cases he is the Father of the Desert, having created it himself, and the arid waste in which he lives and on which practically nothing will grow is the direct result of his appalling indolence, combined with his simian trait of destroying everything he does not understand. A great part of the country in which, he now ekes out his haphazard existence was at one time fairly prosperous and productive and, by failing to repair damage done by wear .... In his campaign of destruction, the Arab has been most loyally supported by his animals, the camel and the goat."

From: Three Deserts (1936) – British High Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis

[muman613]

Look at how little they cared about the Temple Mount before the Jews returned? They let it become overgrown and did not maintain it... This is further proof that the Temple Mount means absolutely nothing to the arabs and the only reason they hold onto it is to torment the Jewish people.

[syyuge]

The arab peninsula must have been a greenland, before being converted in to a vast desert by the evil trio of arab, camel and the goat.

Even they have converted the whole Afghanistan and Papistan666 into an arid combination of the dry mountains and valleys.