Port of Eilat
port in Israel
The Port of Eilat (Hebrew: נמל אילת) was the only Israeli port on the Red Sea, located at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. This strategic location has given it outsized importance despite being remote from the country's main population centers, and access to the port has played a key role in Arab-Israeli conflicts. The port shut down in July 2025 following a blockade by the Houthi movement.
History
The Port of Eilat was declared in 1952, and constructed between 1952 and 1956.
It was opened for cargo traffic in 1957 and it was designed to serve as the southern gateway to Israel for shipments from East Africa, Asia and the Far East, as it allows Israeli shipping to reach the Indian Ocean without having to sail through the Suez Canal. Since it was opened, a major user of the port is Dead Sea Works and its parent ICL Group Ltd., which exports minerals from the Dead Sea, mainly potash to India, China and the Far East, using a dedicated wharf at the port.
Egyptian naval blockades of the Straits of Tiran which control access to Eilat featured prominently in the events which led to two major Arab-Israeli conflicts: the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War.
Thereafter until the Iranian Revolution, oil was imported through the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline.
In the 1980s, the port handled up to 40,000 containers a year, but the business waned until it was eliminated altogether in 2007, when Zim Integrated Shipping Services stopped visiting the port, preferring to ship containers directly to Israel's Mediterranean ports.
Until the late 1990s, importers of goods from the Far East were required by the Israeli government to ship them into the country via the port of Eilat (In order to ensure there is sufficient traffic through the Port).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Port of Eilat” is port in Israel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Port, Eilat and port, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2915417. VIAF identifies the subject as 152976785. Authority coordinates are 29.532, 34.940. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1952, 1956 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Port of Eilat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.