Ashkelon or Ashqelon (/ˈæʃkəlɒn/ ASH-kə-lon; Hebrew: אַשְׁקְלוֹן, romanized: ʾAšqəlōn, IPA: [ʔaʃkeˈlon] ⓘ; Arabic: عَسْقَلَان, romanized: ʿAsqalān) is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, 50 kilometres (30 mi) south of Tel Aviv, and 13 kilometres (8 mi) north of the border with the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian village of Al-Jura (El-Jurah) stood northeast of and immediately adjacent to Tel Ashkelon and is documented in Ottoman tax registers.

[8] In 1596, Ottoman records showed Majdal to be a large village of 559 Muslim households, making it the 7th-most-populous locality in Palestine after Safad, Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus, Hebron and Kafr Kanna.

In 1920 a British Government report estimated that there were 550 cotton looms in the town with an annual output worth 30–40 million francs.

Many other fabrics were produced, some with poetic names such as ji'nneh u nar ("heaven and hell"), nasheq rohoh ("breath of the soul") and abu mitayn ("father of two hundred").

[22] Majdal was occupied by the Egyptian army in the early stages of the 1948 war, along with the rest of the Gaza region that had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations plan.

[6][8][23] Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were in favor of expulsion, while Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut objected.

[4] The government offered the Palestinians positive inducements to leave, including a favorable currency exchange, but also caused panic through night-time raids.

[24] The deportation was approved by Ben-Gurion and Dayan over the objections of Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, who envisioned the town as a productive example of equal opportunity.

[4] According to Israeli records, in total 2,333 Palestinians were transferred to the Gaza Strip, 60 to Jordan, 302 to other towns in Israel, and a small number remained in Ashkelon.

"[25] Acting on an Egyptian complaint, the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission ruled that the Palestinians transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, but this was not done.

Re-population of the recently vacated Arab dwellings by Jews had been official policy since at least December 1948, but the process began slowly.

In 1949 and 1950, three immigrant transit camps (ma'abarot) were established alongside Majdal (renamed Migdal) for Jewish refugees from Arab countries, Romania and Poland.

Northwest of Migdal and the immigrant camps, on the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village al-Jura,[29] entrepreneur Zvi Segal, one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence, established the upscale Barnea neighborhood.

The remains of nearly 100 mostly male infants were found in a sewer under the bathhouse, leading to conjectures that prostitutes had discarded their unwanted newborns there.

[36] An 11th-century mosque, Maqam al-Imam al-Husayn, a site of pilgrimage for both Sunni and Shia Muslims,[37]: 185–186 [38][39] which had been built under the Fatimids by Badr al-Jamali and where tradition held that the head of Mohammad's grandson Hussein ibn Ali was buried, was blown up by the IDF under instructions from Moshe Dayan as part of a broader programme to destroy mosques in July 1950.

[37][39][41][43] A domed structure housing the 13th-century tomb of Sheikh Awad sits atop a hill overlooking Ashkelon's northern beaches.

[52] On 12 May 2008, a rocket fired from the northern Gazan city of Beit Lahiya hit a shopping mall in southern Ashkelon, causing significant structural damage.

Southern District Police chief Uri Bar-Lev believed the Grad-model Katyusha rocket was manufactured in Iran.

[54] In November 2014, the mayor, Itamar Shimoni, began a policy of discrimination against Arab workers, refusing to allow them to work on city projects to build bomb shelters for children.

His discriminatory actions brought criticism from others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat who likened the discrimination to the anti-Semitism experienced by Jews in Europe 70 years earlier.

[59] On October 10, 2023, during the Israel–Hamas war, Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Hamas, warned all citizens of Ashkelon to evacuate before 5:00 P.M. local time via a post to his Telegram channel.

[60] In the early years, the city was primarily inhabited by Mizrahi Jews, who fled to Israel after being expelled from Muslim lands.

Ashkelon is the northern terminus for the Trans-Israel pipeline, which brings petroleum products from Eilat to an oil terminal at the port.

[43] It was built in place of Hussein ibn Ali's 11th-century mosque, a center of Muslim pilgrimages, destroyed by the Israeli army in 1950.

[70] Situated ten kilometres (6 mi) from Gaza, the hospital has been the target of numerous Qassam rocket attacks, sometimes as many as 140 over one weekend.