Ashkelon

The modern city is named after the ancient seaport of Ascalon, which was destroyed in 1270 and whose remains are on the southwestern edge of the modern metropolis.

The Israeli city, first known as Migdal, was founded in 1949 approximately 4 km inland from ancient Ascalon at the Palestinian town of al-Majdal. Its inhabitants had been exclusively Muslims and Christians, and the area had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; on the eve of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the inhabitants numbered 10,000 and in October 1948, the city accommodated thousands more Palestinian refugees from nearby villages.

The town was conquered by Israeli forces on 5 November 1948, by which time much of the Arab population had fled, leaving some 2700 inhabitants, of whom Israeli soldiers deported 500 in December 1948, and most of the rest were deported by 1950. Today, the city's population is almost entirely Israeli Jews.

Migdal, as it was called in Hebrew, was initially repopulated by Jewish immigrants and demobilized soldiers.