THE STATE OF ISRAEL

The contents of this column reflect the views of the author, who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and/ or Louisiana State University. Archaeological evidence has uncovered the existence of man during the Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age) in what is now modern Israel. During the subsequent Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), humans had cultivated crops and built towns, such as Jericho, by 7,000 BC. Israel is hilly in the North, and its highest peak is Mt. Meron at l,l25 m (3,692 ft). It is bounded on the North by Lebanon, on the West by the Mediterranean Sea, on the East by Syria and Jordan, by Egypt to the Southwest, and by the Negev Desert to the South with the Gulf of Aqaba at its extreme Southern port. The State of Israel was established by decree of the United Nations on 15 May 1948. The first serious mapping of Israel on modern lines was undertaken in 1798 by Napoleon, as an extension of his survey of Egypt. A Topographic Section was formed which consisted of four officers, an astronomer, and four “intelligent soldiers.” Bases were measured at Alexandria and Cairo by the “Service Topographique de l’Armee d’Egypte,” and topographic maps were compiled using a 10 km grid with an origin at the great pyramids of Giza. The coastline depicted on these early French topographic maps was actually based on British Admiralty Charts. Survey work on the ground was completed late in 1801, and, by the end of 1803, compilation in Paris had reached a stage where the maps could be engraved on copper plates. The sheets were printed in 1808, but Napoleon ordered that they should remain under seal as state secrets. The maps were not finally published until 1817. In 1865, Captain C. W. Wilson, RE (later Major General Sir Charles Wilson), surveyed the City of Jerusalem at a scale of 1:2,500. The success of Wilson’s survey led directly to the establishment of an association called the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). November of 1871 was the beginning of the PEF surveying and mapping activities, and by 1874 Lieutenant H. H. Kitchener, RE (later Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum), arrived to assist Lieutenant C. R. Conder in the first successful mapping expedition of the entire region since Napoleon’s attempt. Conder’s report speaks of oak forests and bears, wolves, wild pig, cheetah, deer, antelope, and a great variety of game birds. The fauna were the same as reported in the Bible except for the lion, last recorded by the Crusaders in the 12th century. The surveying and mapping was completed by 1878 and comprised 26 sheets, all based on a single Cassini-Soldner projection with a Central Meridian (lo) = 34° 56' East of Greenwich. The ellipsoid of reference was the Clarke 1866. There was no Grid associated with this sheet series where each map measured 15' from north to south and 22' from east to west. Sir Arden-Close remarked, “It is interesting to note that the field work was done by prismatic compass and that no plane-table was used, though, in general, the country lends itself remarkably well to plane-tabling. The reason given by Conder was that the members of the party moved everywhere on horseback, and that a plane table is an inconvenient thing to carry on a horse.” Conder and Kitchener supervised Stanford’s engraving of the final maps in 1881. In 1883-4, Kitchener accompanied an expedition and carried out a triangulation from a base at Aqaba to the Dead Sea, connecting it with the original Palestine control framework near Beersheba. In December 1913, Captain S. F. Newcomb, RE was given charge of a large surveying and archeological expedition which started in Gaza and was to cover the entire Sinai Peninsula. One member of that expedition included T. E. Lawrence, later known as Lawrence of Arabia! Close remarked, “It was doubtless the experience which Lawrence gained on this expedition that justified his being commissioned into the Directorate of Military Survey in September 1914, where he was immediately involved in the compilation of the map of Sinai.” Lawrence’s cartographic drafting work of Israel between Gaza and Aqaba was performed in Cairo where he also interviewed prisoners, processed intelligence data from agents behind enemy lines, and produced a handbook on the Turkish Army. Although a gridded version (referenced to the Bessel 1841 ellipsoid) of Conder’s one-inch to the mile map series was used by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force during W.W. I, there was also a need for larger scale maps of the Palestine for artillery and tactical purposes. The British Forces had no town maps of some of the key towns of Palestine. Towns situated beyond the front line, such as Gaza, Beersheba, Ramleh, and others were photographed by the Aerial Squadrons and maps of those towns were made. The first map, that of Gaza, was produced on 25 January 1917, and was probably the first town-map ever made using aerial photographs. Other maps produced during 1918, such as those of Nablus and ElKerek ,were maps that demonstrated a new solution to the problem of the use of aerial photographs for the