Ashkelon

Ashkelon is a coastal city in Israel's Southern District on the Mediterranean, about 50 kilometers south of Tel Aviv and 13 kilometers north of the Gaza Strip, with 166,864 residents as of 2024, the third largest city in the district. Established in 1949 as Migdal on the site of the depopulated Palestinian town of al-Majdal following its allocation to an Arab state under the UN Partition Plan and its conquest by Israeli forces in November 1948, it was renamed Ashkelon in 1953 after the ancient port of Ascalon, destroyed in 1270; early residents were largely Jewish immigrants from Yemen, North Africa and Europe, and the city today hosts the world's largest seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant and the northern terminus of the Trans-Israel petroleum pipeline.