Canada Camp

Canada Camp was a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern Sinai near Rafah, formed in 1972 and evacuated in 2000. The Camp was named after the Canadian contingent of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I), which formerly had a camp at the location. Most refugees were relocated to Tel al-Sultan in southern Gaza.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conquered the Sinai and the adjacent Gaza Strip. In 1970/71, Israel demolished homes in Rafah for road widening under the pretention of security measures. Sixteen thousand Palestinian refugees, a quarter of them in Rafah were forced to relocate when their shelters were destroyed by the Israeli authorities. At least two thousand of the displaced were moved to al-Arish, in the occupied Sinai, and several hundred to the West Bank.

In 1972, the Canada Camp Housing Project was established in Egyptian Rafah, just across the international boundary with Sinai, initiated by the Israeli Government. UNRWA provided schooling and some medical care with staff who had also been stranded across the border. The refugees had no right to work in Egypt and were provided with food rations and minimal amounts of cash aid. This camp became known as "Canada Camp", named after the Canadian contingent of the UNEF, which formerly had a camp at the location. A similar housing project was developed in 1973 in the Gazan part of Rafah, called "Brazil Camp" after the Brazilian UNEF contingent. UNEF I was the first United nations Emergency Force, operating from November 1956 to June 1967 to serve as a buffer between the Egyptian and Israeli forces and supervise the ceasefire. It was withdrawn in May–June 1967, at Egypt's request.

The refugees were told, that under the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel and Egypt had agreed on the repatriation of them to the Gaza Strip within 6 months. Following the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979, which resulted from the Camp David Accords, Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1982. The Gaza–Egypt border was redrawn, but only 8 families returned to Gaza without any compensation. In 1985, there were still 488 families in Canada Camp. However, funding problems, bureaucratic delays, lack of political will and difficult security conditions prolonged the process.

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