When you think of "The Middle East", what landscapes come to mind? Maybe sweltering, dry deserts? Maybe cacti and sand dunes with the occasional camel plodding along? This dry landscape exists in Israel, but it is just one among many. There is also a lush, green climate in the north of the country that receives a lot of yearly rainfall and is well suited to agriculture. The middle of the country doesn't look like the north or the south, because it is flatter, without the mountains in the north and the south, and to me it looks a lot like upstate New York. The craziest thing about these different biomes, or climate regions, is that they exist within an hour's drive of one another.
The lifestyles of people who live in different regions of Israel vary because of the changes in climate. There are a lot of people involved in agriculture in Israel. In fact, many of the original communities here, called kibbutzim and moshavim (both words for village/community), were established to farm different crops.
