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.