Every year Palestinians commemerate Land Day / Yom al-Ard/ which coincides with the third anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza, and is marked by Palestinians wherever they live. on the anniversary of March 30, 1978,when Palestinian villages and cities across the country witnessed mass demonstrations against the states plans to expropriate 2,000 hectares of land in and around the Arab villages of Araba and Sakhnin as a part of a plan to "Judaise the Galilee".Israel's Galilee region.
In coordination with the military, some 4,000 police officers were dispatched to quell the unrest. At the end of the day, six Palestinian citizens were Killed by occupation forces, Kheir Mohammas Salim Tasin, Khadija Qaeem Shavaboch, Raja Hssein, AbuRayva, Khader Eid, Mahmoud Khalayleh, Muhsin HasanHasan, Said Taha and Raafar Ali-Zheir, as they defended their land, and over one hundred injured by state security forces..
The Day of the land - or Land Day marked the first mass mobilization of Palestinians within Israel against internal colonialism and land theft. It also signalled the failure of Israel to subjugate Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages, after around 700,000 of them were either expelled or forced to flee massacres committed by Zionist armed groups in 1948.
Today's commemoration of Land Day is an emblematic reminderL that the day falls during the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. With immense grief and rage at the horrors the Israeli military is committing in Gaza right now, we recognize Palestinians’ deep roots in their land as we support the struggle for Palestinian freedom.and remember the countless human rights violations that have characterised more than 70 years of Palestinian land confiscation and dispossession.
This important day in Palestinian history commemorates the Palestinians sense of belonging to a people, to a cause and a country, to stand united against racial oppression and rules of apartheid,and the discriminatory practices of the Israeli government, giving continual potency to the Palestinians cause , its quest for justice and Palestinian rights, and its resistance to injustice,who never cease to fight for their land while holding passionately to their history and identity. It is the right of return, recognised in the United Nations Resolution 194, that drives Palestinians to continue with the commemoration of Land Day - regardless of their geographical location.
The day is commemorated annually by Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and further afield in refugee camps and among the Palestinian diaspora worldwide, with demonstrations, marches and by planting olive and fruit trees, as a symbol of their resilience to daily occupation..
Despite attempts to suppress Palestinian political movements, Land Day has remained a unifying symbol of resistance for Palestinian citizens in their fight for land, identity, and rights.While Israeli settler colonial expansionism does not rest, neither does Palestinian perseverance and Palestinians are continuing to mark Land Day with anti-Israel protests around Israel, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Land Day continues to be poignantly relevant as Israel continues to confiscate land, expand their colonies, and continue to build their illegal settlements in flagrant violation of all international conventions, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.
Land day is a Palestine day, a day for its people to proudly declare that they are one from the River to the Sea. It serves to remind the world that the Israeli denial and suppression of Palestinian resistance and their right to self-determination is a policy intended to squash the Palestinian people’s will and dominate them to expand Israel’s settler colonialism.
The Keep Hope Alive - Olive Tree Campaign works to support the Palestinian farmers to protect their land, to restore their hope, to empower them and to strengthen their steadfastness, by providing them with olive trees and share with them actions of solidarity and support from partners and friends worldwide.
In 2018, the Day of the Land once again bore witness to the popular organizing of the people, as thousands upon thousands gathered in Gaza for the Great March of Return, and occupation foces again shot down Palestinians defending their land and upholding their rights, 47 years after the first Land Day massacre. Israel occupying forces killed 16 martyrs of the land and return, with over 200 more shot down in the marches in the months and days to come.
The Palestinian struggle is unified around rootedness in the land: from land defenders in Masafer Yatta, to farmers in the Naqab. From those who use the day to visit the location of their villages destroyed in the Nakba, to those in exile who demand return to their homeland.
Today, Palestinians are resisting Israel’s relentless onslaught across their homeland. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Most of Gaza’s residents are already refugees, displaced from their land by Israel’s previous campaigns of ethnic cleansing.
In Palestinian reality, every day is Land Day. Despite Israel's genocide and apartheid, Palestinians will never give up their right to return to their ancestral lands.Today and tomorrow I continue to stand side by side with my sisters and brothers in solidarity with their struggle for peace, justice, equality and an end to the illegal occupation of their land.
I would urge others who may read this to do the same.As we mark the 49th anniversary of Land Day, commemorate all of the Palestinians murdered in Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million people in occupied Gaza. The Indigenous people of Palestine will continue their struggle for liberation and for the return of refugees to their ancestral land despite the genocide. and will never give in.
When the Israeli occupation ends, which it must it wil see many Palestinians return to their homeland and live there because it is their land.
The Land Day strike inspired the following powerful poem by Tawfiq Zayyad, Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and politician, that continues to resonate across the Palestinian generations.
Here we will stay - Tawfiq Zayyad ( 7/5/ 29 - 5/7/ 94)
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shrad of glass,
a cactus thron,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.
We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants,
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.
Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the galilee,
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.
Link to poem by Mahmoud Darwish on the same theme :-
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/to-our-land-mahmoud-darwish-13309.html
The international community must go beyond solidarity and demand an end to the occupation and defend the self-determination of the Palestinian people, as recognized by the International Court of Justice and the United Nations General Assembly.
We must demand a total ceasefire and support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their safe return to their land, and to demand our governments ends its complicity in Israel’s settler-colonialism and apartheid, and to stop arming Israel, and ban all trade with illegal Israeli settlements on stolen land. To those here in Britain I will urge to write to Foreign Secretary David Lammy now. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!
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