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.

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.

In the beginning of the 1948 Palestine War, Israel held several posts along the Dead Sea shore, including the villages Kalya and Beit HaArava in the northernmost part. These were home to important civilian installations, such as potash plants. Israel sought to keep these plants operational during the war and demilitarize the area—important British businessmen had stakes in the potash plants, and Transjordan stood to make a profit by not attacking the villages and the plants. An agreement was forged with King Abdullah in this regard.

However, with the end of the British Mandate and the Arab invasion of Israel, the situation began to deteriorate. In March–April 1948, British forces ceased protecting Jewish convoys traveling from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. From May 14 to 17—when Israel's Declaration of Independence and the Arab invasion took place—women and children from Kalya and Beit HaArava were evacuated by plane to other parts of the country. Also at that time, on May 16, Transjordanian troop movements were spotted next to Jericho nearby. In the meantime, the remaining residents sought to surrender to Transjordan and negotiated terms.

After the negotiations concluded on May 18, delegations from the two villages left for Jerusalem and Mount Sodom to present the terms, but Sodom refused to surrender and on May 19 the Jewish Dead Sea residents decided to remain and fight. However, for military reasons they thought best to concentrate all forces at Mount Sodom. On the same day the potash installations were sabotaged and 11.5 tons of explosives destroyed. On May 20, all residents of Kalya and Beit HaArava sailed to Sodom on boats.

At that time, Israeli forces had no control over the Negev desert except an enclave west of Beersheba. On May 19, fresh water supplies that had come from Safi in Transjordan ceased, and the Transjordanian Arab Legion fired cannons at Sodom during the war, but never attacked. The base was thus supplied from the air through a makeshift airfield. The fighters tried to capture Safi to get fresh water, but failed. Sodom also had its own potash factory, which was maintained by the fighters so that it could become operational again on short order. For months, large Egyptian forces held the entire Auja–Beersheba–Hebron corridor and heavy fighting took place for control of the western enclave, so Israel could not think of linking up with the Dead Sea forces.

However, this changed in Operation Yoav in October 1948, when Beersheba and its immediate surroundings were captured by the Israel Defense Forces. This split the Egyptian lines and left no serious Egyptian or Transjordanian presence between the Israelis and the Dead Sea. Israel's prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion was keen on capturing Kurnub and Ein Husub because he believed that those areas were fit for settlement because of a large spring. He also saw historical value in Ein Husub, which was not far from where Solomon's mines were said to have been. In addition, the area was part of the Jewish State in the 1947 Partition Plan.