ABSTRACT
From the war of 1948 until the Six Day War in 1967, Judea and Samaria were cut off from Israel by the Israel Jordanian Armistice lines. The two regions forming an integral part of cis-Jordanian Palestine have thus been deprived of their contacts with the adjacent Coastal Plain and Gaza Strip as well as their outlet to the Mediterranean. Their sole remaining contacts were with the Kingdom of Jordan. The chapter describes and analyzes against the physical, economic and social background of the area for enforced and unnatural political conditions both the rural and urban settlement structure had to undergo far-reaching changes. Mount Hebron forms a wide crest with two synclines on both sides, the lowland in the west and the desert in the east. Hebron is located on the flat crest which continues to the north, declining gradually to 2,100 ft. in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
