Is it your suggestion that the Levant was once as well-watered and verdant as, say, the Netherlands or Hawaii?
While human activities undoubtedly contributed to desertification, the Levant is geographically and climactically a desert. The amount of surface water that is available may be directly influenced by human behavior, but I do not think that human behavior changed the fundamentals of the landscape.
We identified why north Africa greened approximately every 21,000 years over the past eight million years. It was caused by changes in the Earth’s orbital precession - the slight wobbling of the planet while rotating. This moves the Northern Hemisphere closer to the sun during the summer months.
*What Really Turned the Sahara Desert From a Green Oasis Into a Wasteland?* - 10,000 years ago, this iconic desert was unrecognizable. A new hypothesis suggests that humans may have tipped the balance
While I personally veer toward the more recent slight orbital variation cause, neither account factors much in the current AGW debate .. cyclic changes in local regions of the planet are a distinct issue from a steady rise in global atmospheric insulation properties.
The Sahara was once a forest. Its desertification was not caused by human activity.
On the other hand for the Fertile Crescent: the overuse of irrigation and water steering with shorter term agricultural goals with only direct affects in mind. The area was largely marshlands in the past.
And also mismanagement of forests lead to desertification of formerly fertile areas on the timescale before the current large scale climate change era began. This was before humanity could have as big possible part in the forming of climate as currently.
While human activities undoubtedly contributed to desertification, the Levant is geographically and climactically a desert. The amount of surface water that is available may be directly influenced by human behavior, but I do not think that human behavior changed the fundamentals of the landscape.
Am I wrong?