Israel on the verge of approving the plan to reunite Gaza before to Rafah incursion – Miller

The Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, said that Israel was about to approve a plan to help Palestinian relatives of Canadians leave the Gaza Strip. But then Israel invaded the town of Rafah, and the plan was put on hold.

“On Monday, Miller told the House immigration committee that we have tried really hard, but have not been very successful.”

“We will keep trying to bring our family members to a safe place. ”

He made the comments when people were getting more and more unhappy about the rules put in place a few months ago. The rules were supposed to help Canadians bring their family members from dangerous places in the Gaza Strip and Sudan.

Miller said on Monday that they will process more applications for people leaving Gaza. But they’re not sure if any Palestinians have come to Canada using this program.

The Gaza program at first only allowed 1,000 applications to be accepted for processing. This means that all the necessary paperwork had to be completed before biometric processing in Egypt. Miller says that as of May 24, 2,903 applications had reached that point.

Miller has now increased that number to 5,000 applications, and each application can have many family members included.

The department has given 179 permits to people from Gaza through the temporary-resident program as of April 29, but it’s not clear if anyone has come to Canada yet.

The NDP says the government messed up the Gaza and Sudan programs and didn’t learn from problems with helping Afghans after the Taliban took over Kabul.

Family in Canada say they received confusing information from the government in Ottawa about the program. This caused some people to miss the opportunity to leave Rafah using other methods.

A document received through a request for information shows that the Immigration Department thought there would be a lot of applications for the program, even though only 1,000 people were allowed to apply.


In December, Miller signed a memo that said only 1,000 people should come, but we expect a lot more than that.

The memo says that in the 2021 census, 45,905 Canadians identified as having Palestinian background.

Miller said that the program he started in January needs help from the Israeli government agency that organizes work in Palestinian territories, called COGAT. He said this never happened for many months.

“Not long ago, we have received some good signs from the Israeli government that they would recognize this program and process it through COGAT in a timely manner,” said Miller, until the Rafah crossing closed on May 7.

Rafah is a town on the border with Egypt. It’s the only way for people to leave Gaza, but they have to follow strict rules from Israel and Egypt. It has become a safe place for Palestinians escaping attacks by Israel in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Three weeks ago, Israel started an attack in Rafah, even though Canada, the US, and many other countries asked them not to. Israel is saying that Rafah has become an important place for Hamas, a group that has killed many people in Israel. Israel wants to control Rafah to stop Hamas.

On Sunday, people all over the world were very upset after seeing terrible pictures of injured children from bombings and fires in camps where homeless people live. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says that 36,000 people, including fighters, have died in the war.

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly repeated her request for a break in fighting on Monday.

“We are very upset about the attacks that killed Palestinian civilians in Rafah,” she wrote on platform X. “We must stop this level of human suffering. ”

The Sudan program allows people to live in the country forever, while the Gaza program only allows residency for up to three years. This is because Israel does not want to seem like it is taking over the Palestinian area again.

“He said it’s really important to think about the politics of the region, especially the talk about Gaza getting emptied, and how it would look if Canada got involved in that. ” “That’s mainly why we didn’t make it last forever. ”

Last spring, there was a war in Sudan. Miller said his relatives might not come to Canada until late fall.

Family members say that officials have mentioned that there have been delays with getting fingerprints and other biometric information. However, Miller said that the Sudan program is more extensive because it includes permanent residency.

Miller said that Ottawa will be taking in 3,250 applications from the Sudan program, and around 7,000 people will be coming to Canada.

He said the number is based on how many things his department and “security partners” can handle, but it might increase.