Ein Bokek

The shore here has been used since antiquity, though never densely settled: the narrow strip between cliff and water carried the road along the western side of the sea, and the spring at Ein Bokek supported a small oasis. Remains of a Roman-era fort, Metzad Bokek, commanding the road, and of an ancient perfume and medicine workshop have been excavated there, and the Dead Sea's asphalt, which rises naturally from its bed, was exported to Egypt for mummification.

The modern place owes everything to industry and tourism. From the 1930s the Palestine Potash Company, later the Dead Sea Works, began extracting minerals at the southern end of the sea, and the town of Sodom grew as a works rather than a settlement. The first hotels appeared at Ein Bokek in the 1960s, when the combination of mineral water, mud, warm dry air and filtered sunlight was promoted for skin and joint conditions, and the strip grew through the following decades into a line of large hotels with spas attached.

Its setting has changed in a way few resorts experience. The Dead Sea's level has fallen sharply since the mid-20th century, as the Jordan's water is diverted and minerals are extracted: the level is now more than 430 metres below sea level, and the southern basin is held as a chain of shallow evaporation ponds worked for minerals and divided by a dike along the international border. Further north, the falling shoreline has opened sinkholes that have closed beaches and stretches of road.

Ein Bokek has no old community, no religious centre and no market: it is a purpose-built resort, and its culture is that of a spa. Days are organised around floating, mud, showers and rest, and the pace is deliberately slow. The population on any given day is made up of hotel guests, staff who commute in, and pilgrims and tour groups stopping between Masada and Jerusalem.

Its visitors have long been mixed. Israeli families come for holidays and weekends; European and, historically, Russian and German visitors come in winter for the sun; and a steady stream arrives for treatment of psoriasis and other skin conditions, sometimes for several weeks, which gives parts of the strip a clinical as well as a holiday feel. Signage and hotel staff work in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Russian.

Local etiquette is straightforward. Swimwear belongs on the beach and at the pools, not in the arcade; the shore is public and free, which is unusual for a resort and a point of local pride; and Shabbat is observed in most hotels, with kosher kitchens, adjusted lifts and a quieter Saturday. Because the water is dangerous to swallow or get in the eyes, lifeguards and signs give firm instructions that visitors are expected to follow rather than test.

Almost nobody lives at Ein Bokek. It is a hotel district within the Tamar Regional Council, and its working population — housekeepers, therapists, cooks, lifeguards and drivers — travels in daily from Arad, Dimona, Yeruham and the small Dead Sea communities, with a few hundred people living at Neve Zohar and the kibbutzim and moshavim nearby. Thousands of guests may be on the strip at once, far outnumbering residents.

The wider local economy has two legs: tourism along the shore, and the potash, bromine and magnesium works at Sodom to the south, one of the region's largest employers and the reason the evaporation ponds exist at all. Agriculture in the Arava valley and the date plantations of the Dead Sea communities add a third. Water, salt harvesting and the sea's falling level are constant subjects of local and national argument, as are plans for the shoreline's future.

The daily rhythm is set by the heat. Bathing happens early and late, the middle of the day is spent indoors or in the shade, and buses and delivery lorries arrive in the morning along Route 90. Occupancy is strongly seasonal and has been badly affected by the disruption to tourism since 2023 and by the war from 2026, which is felt at once in a place with no other trade.

Eating at Ein Bokek happens mostly in the hotels, where the Israeli buffet sets the pattern: a large breakfast of eggs, salads, soft cheeses, olives, herring, smoked fish, yoghurt and pastries, and a dinner of salads, grilled meat or fish, rice, roast vegetables and sweet trays. Many kitchens are kosher, so dairy appears at breakfast and meat at dinner, and the two are not served together.

Outside the hotels the arcade supplies the usual Israeli street food: falafel and hummus, shawarma carved into pita with pickles and tahini, pizza, grilled skewers, fresh juices and ice cream. Nothing here is a local speciality — the strip is too new and too small to have developed one — but the kitchens draw on the same Middle Eastern and North African repertoire as the desert towns inland, where couscous, chraime fish in spicy tomato sauce and slow-cooked stews are the everyday food.

The genuine local products are agricultural and mineral. The Dead Sea communities and the Arava farms grow large Medjool dates, sold whole or as syrup, alongside desert-grown vegetables, herbs and melons, and small wineries in the Negev use drip irrigation to produce wine in an arid climate. Bedouin hospitality nearby means cardamom coffee and sweet sage tea, and the mineral salts and mud that fill the shop windows are food-adjacent only in that they come from the same water people bathe in.