page_title: Emmaus Nicopolis
section_title: Israel
hierarchical_section_title: Emmaus Nicopolis / History / Israel
caption_attribution_description: Canada Park, Israel/West Bank, showing former villages and armistice lines
context_page_description: Emmaus Nicopolis, was the Roman name for one of the towns associated with the Emmaus of the New Testament, where Jesus is said to have appeared after his death and resurrection. Emmaus was the seat of the Roman Emmaus, whereas Nicopolis was the name of the city from the 3rd century CE until the conquest of Palestine by the Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate in 639. In the modern age, the site was the location of the Palestinian Arab village of Imwas, near the Latrun junction, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, before its destruction in 1967. The site today is inside Canada Park, a place maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, although the archaeological site has been cared for by a resident French Catholic community since 1993.
context_section_description: In 1967, after the Six-Day War the residents of Imwas Israeli forces expelled the population and the village was razed by bulldozers, leaving the Byzantine-crusader church, called in Arabic, al-Kenisah, intact in their cemetery. The Catholic congregation, the Community of the Beatitudes, renovated the site in 1967–1970 and opened the French Center for the Study of the Prehistory of the Land of Israel next to it where they were allowed to settle in 1993.
  Subsequently, Canada Park was created in 1973, financed by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Canada, and included the plantation of a forest on the rubble of Imwas/Emmaus The site became a favourite picnic ground for Israelis and the Latrun salient an area of Israeli commemoration of its War of Independence.
caption: Map of Canada Park.
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