page_title: Stalemate in Southern Palestine
section_title: German and Ottoman forces
hierarchical_section_title: Stalemate in Southern Palestine / Situation after battles for Gaza / German and Ottoman forces
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Ottoman Machine Gun Company in 1917.
context_page_description: The Stalemate in Southern Palestine was a six month standoff between the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the Ottoman Army in World War I. The two hostile forces faced each other along the Gaza to Beersheba line during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, with neither side able to force its opponent to withdraw. The stalemate began in April 1917 with the defeat of the EEF by the Ottoman Army at the Second Battle of Gaza and lasted until the EEF offensive began with the Battle of Beersheba on 31 October 1917.
  Previous to the stalemate, units of the Ottoman Fourth Army had been forced out of the Sinai Peninsula by a series of EEF victories: the Battle of Romani in August 1916, the Battle of Magdhaba in December and the Battle of Rafa in January 1917. The EEF followed up those victories by making two unsuccessful attempts to capture Gaza: the First Battle of Gaza in March, and the Second Battle of Gaza in April. These two Ottoman victories halted the attempted EEF invasion of southern Palestine, leading to the stalemate.
context_section_description: The Ottoman Fourth Army after the Second Battle of Gaza consisted of 174,908 men, 36,225 animals, 5,351 camels, armed with 145,840 rifles, 187 machine guns, and 282 artillery pieces. At this time the Fourth Army's five corps were responsible for garrisoning Palestine, the northern coast of Syria, and the Hejaz railway.
  The strategic priorities of Enver Pasha and the Ottoman General Staff were to use this force to push the EEF back to the Suez Canal and to retake Baghdad and Mesopotamia along with Persia, while relying on "nonexistent interior lines of communication" and "chronic shortfalls in strategic transportation." In 1917, the Turkish 54th and 59th Infantry Divisions in Palestine and Syria became inoperative. The loss of these two divisions was blamed on problems of supply caused by the single–track, incomplete railway line from Turkey, which was not completed through the Taurus and Amanus mountains until 1918. Despite these deficiencies, following the two victories at Gaza, the Ottoman Army was "greatly strengthened in both force and morale."
  Within a few weeks of the April battle for Gaza, General von Kressenstein, German field commander under Djemal Pasha, added, to his 3rd, 16th and 53rd Divisions of the Fourth Army, the 7th and 54th Divisions as reinforcements. This force was reorganised into two corps to hold the Gaza to Beersheba line: the XX Corps (16th and 54th Infantry Divisions, 178th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Cavalry Division), and the XXII Corps (3rd, 7th, 53rd Infantry Divisions).
  The 30-mile (48 km)-long Ottoman front line stretched southeastwards from Gaza and dominated the country to the southwest, where the EEF was spread out in open, low-lying, rugged country interrupted by many deep wadis. From Gaza to Beersheba, this front line "stretch[ed] continuously for almost fifty kilometres." Major defensive outposts along the line, such as Rijm el Atawineh and Aba Hareira, could support each other; and, as they overlooked an almost flat plain, making a frontal attack against them virtually impossible. Between Gaza and Aba Hareira, at the Wadi el Sheria and halfway to Beersheba, the Ottoman defences were especially strong. Although those strengthened defences did not extend to Beersheba, strong fortifications, some being blasted from solid rock, made the isolated town a fortress.
  Closest to Gaza, the 3rd Division of von Kressenstein's Fourth Army was deployed to defend Gaza and the defences stretching from Samson's Ridge, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Gaza, along the Beersheba Road to Khashm el Bir and Khashm Sihan. From that point the Ottoman defences along the road were held by the 53rd Division, while the 79th Regiment defended fortified works which linked with two battalions of the 16th Division holding Tel esh Sheria, 15 miles (24 km) from Gaza and halfway along the defensive line, while the Ottoman cavalry division was deployed near Huj, 10 miles (16 km) east of Gaza.
  New troop reinforcements for the buildup were incorporated into the organisational restructuring that saw formation of the Yildirim Army Group and the Seventh and Eighth Armies. New units were schooled in new combat methods developed on the Western Front and conducted multi-echelon combined-arms training. Among these new arrivals, the experience of the 7th Infantry Division (later part of the Eighth Army) was typical. This division left Constantinople on 14 January 1917, and by mid-April was being reorganised in Aleppo before travelling via Jerusalem, to arrive at Beersheba, between 7 May and 14 June 1917. While at Jerusalem in early May the division's 20th Infantry Regiment began company-level training, and after arriving at Beersheba remained in reserve, conducting theatre-specific training until late June, when it went into the front line, training in hand-grenade and trench-mortar use, fortification, reconnaissance, and counter-reconnaissance continuing. The division's 21st Infantry Regiment received similar training.
  From 28 June to 10 August, the 7th Division, and eventually every Ottoman infantry division in Palestine, reorganised 
caption: Ottoman Machine Gun Company (not the photo referred to in Note 1)
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