"Eilat", Adel Zawati, a Paper Clipping

Handwritten in Arabic, this paper clipping documents the name of "Eilat", a port city on the northern shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. The port was used at the time of King Solomon according to the Torah. The Arab city on which Eilat was built is "Umm Rashrash", a city of an important location, as it is at the important crossroads that connects the north with the south towards the Arabian Peninsula, and from the west (from Egypt - Sinai) to the east and from the south towards the Arabian Peninsula as well. Said road was known as the "Hajj Path", named after pilgrims from Palestine and Egypt to Hijaz. The Nabateans, Byzantines and Romans used it as a naval military base from which their ships set off to the Red Sea, and the Muslims also used it as a base for their conquests towards Palestine and Syria. As for the Crusaders, they set up a fortress on the Pharaoh's Island, the ruins of which still stand a  witness to that era. The site preserved its strategic importance during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, and the British also used it in World War I and based their police there. In 1955, Jews established the "Eilat" colony, and they began planning to establish a port there which was inaugurated in 1955, and in the 1960s and 1970s, the city attracted hundreds of Jewish families to live there, as well as tens of Arab families whose breadwinners went there for work and then their families followed. The residents of this city depend on the works related to the port, the most important of all are the services related to the tourist and recreational facilities, such as hotels, swimming pools, fish and coral exhibits and the touristic harbour. The city was planned to reduce the intense heat of its homes and hotels. Eilat was able to attract thousands of foreign tourists and Israeli guests throughout the year, but its attractiveness began to decline in the 1990s and early 2000s after Egypt invested huge sums of money in developing the city of Sharm el-Sheikh, south of Sinai.