Rafaḩ

After the 1948 Palestine war, Egypt governed the area and refugee camps for displaced Palestinians who fled or were expelled from what became Israel were established. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed 111 Palestinians, including 103 refugees in the Rafah refugee camp, during the 1956 Rafah massacre. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli forces re-occupied the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip after capturing them from Egypt. In the same year, IDF troops bulldozed and demolished 144 houses in the Rafah refugee camp, killing 23 Palestinians.

When Israel fully withdrew from the Sinai in 1982, Rafah was split into a Gazan part and an Egyptian part, separated by barbed-wire barriers. Then, since 2000, the core of the city was destroyed by Israel, and since the 2010s also by Egypt, in order to create a large buffer zone.