wire road nearly at Sheikh Zowaiid. As a consequence on 3 February, Major General Chauvel was forced to order the cessation of Allied bombing in the hope that retaliations would also cease, so that the work on the rail line and pipeline could continue. The pipeline reached El Arish on 5 February. In February 1917, the Ottoman Army was observed also building a light railway line from Tel el Sheria to Shellal, near Weli Sheikh Nuran, Sheria becoming the main Ottoman base midway along the Gaza–Beersheba defensive line. The two final actions of the Sinai campaign took place in February 1917 when General Murray ordered attacks on the Ottoman garrisons at Nekhl and Bir el Hassana. The 11th Light Horse Regiment conducted the raid on Nekhl on 17 February. Meanwhile, the 2nd Battalion (British) of the Imperial Camel Corps, together with the Hong Kong and Singapore (Mountain) Battery, conducted the raid on Bir el Hassana, which surrendered with minimal resistance on 18 February. Palestine campaign begins The Palestine campaign began early in 1917 with active operations resulting in the capture of Ottoman Empire territory stretching to the north, being fought continuously from the end of October to the end of December 1917. Operations in the Jordan Valley and into the Transjordan, fought between February and May 1918 were followed by the British occupation of the Jordan Valley while stalemated trench warfare continued across the Judan Hills to the Mediterranean Sea. The final Palestine offensive began in mid-September and the Armistice with the Ottoman Empire signed on 30 October 1918. With the victory at Rafa, Murray had successfully accomplished all his and the War Office's objectives; he had secured the Suez Canal and Egypt from any possibility of a serious land attack and his forces controlled the Sinai Peninsula with a series of strongly fortified positions in depth, along a substantial line of communication based around the railway and pipeline, from Kantara on the Suez Canal to Rafa. However, within two days of the victory at Rafa on 11 January 1917, General Murray was informed by the War Office that, rather than building on the momentum created over the last two and a half weeks by the victories at Magdhaba and Rafa by encouraging him to further advances with promises of more troops, he was required to send the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division on 17 January, to reinforce the Western Front,