PLACES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26775, 19 May 1948, Page 5

PLACES

IN THE NEWS

Petah Tikvah: One of the earliest Jewish settlements, located near Jaffa, Petah Tikvah now has grown into a municipality of some 20,000 citizens, with modern homes and large municipal buildings and apartments. A still-growing community, it stretches out is suburbs into the near-desert country. Gaza: An Arab town of about 40,000 population at the foot of a height on which the Old City once stood. Gaza, or Guzzeh as it is more properly written, has had the misfortune to be the site of numerous battles through the centuries and the present trouble should mean little to a city which in the past has been dignified by attacks from commanders of the historic stature of Alexander the Great, Saladin, Kleber and, more recently, Allenby. Beersheba: Or Bir es Siba, is on the southern limit of the Promised Land. It has been variously known as the “ Well of Seven” or the “Well of Swearing,” so called because of the covenant Abraham entered into here with Abimelech, the Philistine king, which he ratified with an oath and a gift of seven ewe lambs. In the fourth century AD. it was garrisoned by the Romans. Its two deep Sweetwater wells have always made it a place of importance in the arid Sinai.