Operation Lot

Operation Lot (Hebrew: מִבְצָע לוֹט) was an Israeli military operation during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was carried out on November 23–25, 1948, in the eastern Negev desert and the Arava.

The objective of Operation Lot was to create a ground corridor to the isolated Israeli Dead Sea enclave and assert Israeli sovereignty in the area. This became possible after the conquest of Beersheba by the Israel Defense Forces one month earlier, on October 21. The mission was accomplished without battle or firing a single shot.^[1]

The operation was carried in difficult terrain, including the Scorpions Pass. It took three days for the main force of the Negev Brigade to reach Mount Sodom, where residents of villages in the Dead Sea region had been evacuated at the beginning of the war. Additional actions were reconnaissance missions in the Arava which helped make the subsequent Operation Uvda possible, and crossing the international border into Transjordan.