Aerial reconnaissance
Despite continued pressure by the EEF, the two opposing forces were now operating in terrain which favoured defence. In addition to rearguards left by the Ottoman Seventh Army's XX Corps as it retired into the hills, the Seventh Army had managed to establish a line of mainly single trenches running south and south-west on a series of heights up to from Jerusalem, supported by well-sited redoubts. Aerial reconnaissance on 17 November found the road north from Jerusalem to Nablus crowded with refugees.