Today the site, known as Tel Tzafit, is an Israeli national park incorporating archaeological remains which are generally, if not by all, identified as the Philistine city of Gath, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.

[9] Tell es-Safi is situated between the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Beit Shemesh and is one of the country's largest Bronze and Iron Age sites.

The identification was opposed by Albright, who noted its proximity to another leading city from the Philistine league, Ekron (Tel Miqne), but later excavations turned up more supportive evidence for Tell es-Safi.

[14][15][16] Schniedewind writes that Gath was important for the Philistines in the eighth century BCE because of its easily defended geographical position.

The heyday of Ekron was the seventh century BCE, after the site was taken over by the Assyrians as an agricultural administrative center (Dothan and Gitin 1993).

Finds from this period include a hippopotamus ivory cylinder seal, found inside a holemouth jar in a well stratified EB III (c. 2700/2600 – 2350 BCE) context.

A find of a hieratic inscribed LBA bowl fragment (19th - 20th Dynasty) reflects the Egyptian contacts common in this region during this period.

"[21] Radiocarbon dating published in 2015 showed an early appearance of Philistine material culture in the city.

[25][31] The Arab geographer Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali noted around 1495 that a village by this name was within the administrative jurisdiction of Gaza.

The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and sesame, and fruits, as well as goats and beehives; a total of 13,300 akçe.

[37][38] In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Tell al-Safi as a village built of adobe brick with a well in the valley to the north.

[42] The villagers of Tall al-Safi had a mosque, a marketplace, and a shrine for a local sage called Shaykh Mohammad.

[45] On 7 July, Givati commander Shimon Avidan issued orders to the 51st Battalion to take the Tall al-Safi area and "to destroy, to kill and to expel [lehashmid, leharog, u´legaresh] refugees encamped in the area, in order to prevent enemy infiltration from the east to this important position.

"[4] According to Benny Morris, the nature of the written order and, presumably, accompanying oral explanations, probably left little doubt in the battalion OC's minds that Avidan wanted the area cleared of inhabitants.

[46][47] In 1992, Walid Khalidi wrote that the site was overgrown with wild vegetation, mainly foxtail and thorny plants, interspersed with cactuses, date-palm and olive trees.

[49] The first excavations at the site began in 1899 when Frederick J. Bliss and R. A. Stewart Macalister worked for three seasons on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

The excavation failed in its primary goal of firmly identifying the site as Gath but did properly work out the stratigraphy.