Palestine and Syria. A glance at the map of the Gaza-Beersheba line
and the country immediately behind it will show that if a successful
attack were delivered against Gaza the enemy could withdraw his whole
line to a second and supporting position where we should have to begin
afresh upon an almost similar operation. The Turk would still have his
water and would be slightly nearer his supplies.

Since the two unsuccessful attacks in March and April, Gaza had been
put into a powerful state of defence. The houses of the town are
mostly on a ridge, and enclosing the place is a mass of gardens fully
a mile deep, each surrounded by high cactus hedges affording complete
cover and quite impossible for infantry to penetrate. To reduce
Gaza would require a prolonged artillery bombardment with far more
batteries than General Allenby could ever expect to have at his
command, and it is certain that not only would the line in front of
the town have had to be taken, but also the whole of the western end
of the Turks' trench system for a length of at least 12,000 yards.
And, as has been said, with Gaza secured we should still have had to
face the enemy in a new line of positions about the wadi Hesi. Gaza
was the Turks' strongest point. To attack here would have meant a
long-drawn-out artillery duel, infantry would have had to advance over
open ground under complete observation, and, while making a frontal
attack, would have been exposed to enfilade fire from the 'Tank'
system of works to the south-east. It would have proved a costly
operation, its success could only have been partial in that it did not
follow that we should break the enemy's line, and it would not have
enabled us to contain the remainder of the Turkish force.

Nor would an attack on the centre have promised more favourably. Here
the enemy had all the best of the ground. At Atawineh, Sausage Ridge,