Canaan State of Israel (1948–present) Philistia[a] was a confederation of five main cities or pentapolis in the Southwest Levant, made up of principally Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and for a time, Jaffa (part of present-day Tel Aviv).

About a century later, pharaoh Ramesses III boasted of having defeated the Peleset, and allegedly relocated them to the southern abandoned coast of Canaan,[5] recording this victory on a Medinet Habu temple inscription dated to c. 1150 BC.

[8][9] Despite Ramesses III's claim, archaeology has not been able to corroborate the existence of any such (re)settlement, and the lack of sense in granting an apparently barbarous invading people an expansive and richly fertile swath of land already under Egyptian control is noted by scholars.

However, given the minuscule quantity of said pottery finds, it is likely that even if the Philistines had by-and-large settled in the area, they remained a minority which had assimilated into the native Canaanite population by the 10th century BC.

[13] In its historical form, Philistia's northern boundary was the Yarkon River, with the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the Kingdom of Judah at Ziklag to the east, and the Arish to the south.

Throughout the century, often at the incitement of neighboring Egypt, Philistia revolted against Assyrian rule, but each time they were defeated and forced to pay tribute.

The Philistines disappear from written records following the conquest of the Levant by the Neo-Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar II during the 6th century BC, when Ashkelon and many other cities from the region were destroyed.