Land Day
Encyclopedia
Land Day March 30, is an annual day of commemoration for Palestinians of the events of that date in 1976. In response to the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i government's announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...

s of land for "security and settlement purposes", a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

 and marches were organized in Arab towns from the Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...

 to the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...

. In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...

 and police, six Arab citizens
Arab citizens of Israel
Arab citizens of Israel refers to citizens of Israel who are not Jewish, and whose cultural and linguistic heritage or ethnic identity is Arab....

 were killed, about one hundred were wounded, and hundreds of others arrested.

Scholarship on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...

 recognizes Land Day as a pivotal event in the struggle over land and in the relationship of Arab citizens to the Israeli state and body politic. It is significant in that it was the first time since 1948 that Arabs in Israel organized a response to Israeli policies as a Palestinian national
Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people. It has roots in Pan-Arabism and other movements rejecting colonialism and calling for national independence. More recently, Palestinian Nationalism is expressed through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict...

 collective. An important annual day of commemoration in the Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

 national political calendar ever since, it is marked not only by Arab citizens of Israel, but also by Palestinians all over the world
Palestinian diaspora
Palestinian diaspora is a term used to describe Palestinians living outside of historic Palestine - an area today known as Israel and the Palestinian territories or the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip...

.

Background

The Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

s of Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 were a largely agrarian people, 75% of whom made their living off the land before the establishment of the Israeli state. After the Palestinian exodus
1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...

 and the effects of the 1948 Arab-Israel war, land continued to play an important role in the lives of the 156,000 Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

 Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

s who remained inside what became the state of Israel, serving as the source of communal identity, honor, and purpose.

The Israeli government adopted in 1950 the Law of Return
Law of Return
The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...

 to facilitate Jewish immigration to Israel
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 and the absorption of Jewish refugees
Jewish refugees
In the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...

. Israel's Absentees' Property Law of March 1950 transferred the property rights of absentee owners to a government-appointed Custodian of Absentee Property, effectively legalizing the confiscation of lands belonging to the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel in 1948. It was also used to confiscate the lands of Arab citizens of Israel who "are present inside the state, yet classified in law as 'absent'." The number of "present-absentees" or internally displaced Palestinians from among the 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel is estimated (in 2001) to be 200,000, or some 20% of the total Palestinian Arab population in Israel. Salman Abu-Sitta
Salman Abu-Sitta
Salman H. Abu Sitta is a Palestinian researcher and writes about Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian right of return.-Biography:Abu-Sitta was born in Beersheba Salman H. Abu Sitta (Arabic سلمان ابو ستة)(born 1938) is a Palestinian researcher and writes about Palestinian refugees and the...

 estimates that between 1948 and 2003 more than 1000 square kilometres (386.1 sq mi) of land was expropriated from Arab citizens of Israel (present-absentees and otherwise).

According to Oren Yiftachel
Oren Yiftachel
Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.Yiftachel studied during the 1980s in Australian and Israeli universities...

, public protest against state policies and practices from among the Palestinian Arabs in Israel was rare prior to the mid-1970s, owing to a combination of factors including military rule over their localities, poverty, isolation, fragmentation, and their periphal position in the new Israeli state. Those protests that did take place against land expropriations and the restrictions Arab citizens were subject to under military rule (1948-1966) are described by Shany Payes as "sporadic" and "limited", due to restrictions on rights to freedom of movement, expression and assembly characteristic of that period. While the political movement Al-Ard
Al-Ard
Al-Ard was a political movement made up of Arab citizens of Israel active between 1958 and some time in the 1970s. It was the first Arab dissident group of significance to emerge from within Israel that managed to attract the attention of parallel Palestinian nationalist movements outside...

 ("The Land") was active for about a decade, it was declared illegal in 1964, and the most notable antigovernment occasions otherwise were the May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

 protests staged annually by the Communist party
Maki (historical political party)
Maki was a communist political party in Israel. It is not the same party as the modern day Maki, which split from it during the 1960s and later assumed its name.-History:...

.

Catalyzing events

The government of Israel declared its intention to expropriate
Eminent domain
Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...

 lands in the Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...

 for official use, affecting some 20,000 dunams of land between the Arab villages of Sakhnin
Sakhnin
Sakhnin is a city in Israel's North District. It is located in the Lower Galilee, about east of Acre. Sakhnin was declared a city in 1995. Its population of 25,100 is Arab, mostly Muslim with a sizable Christian minority. It is located on the site of the ancient Jewish town Sikhnin, which...

 and Arraba
Arraba
Arraba is Israel's fourth largest local council and largest Israeli Arab local council. It is located in the Lower Galilee in the North District, to the north of Nazareth and adjacent to Sakhnin and Deir Hanna...

, of which 6,300 dunams was Arab-owned. On March 11, 1976, the government published the expropriation plan.

Yiftachel writes that the land confiscation
Confiscation
Confiscation, from the Latin confiscatio 'joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury' is a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority...

s and expansion of Jewish settlements in the northern Galilee formed part of the government's continuing strategy aimed at the Judaization of the Galilee
Judaization of the Galilee
Judaization of the Galilee is a regional project and policy of the Israeli government and associated private organizations which is intended to increase Jewish population and communities in the Galilee, a region within Israel which has a Palestinian Arab majority.-Background:With the termination...

 which itself constituted both a response to and catalyst for Palestinian resistance, culminating in the events of Land Day. According to Nayef Hawatmeh
Nayef Hawatmeh
Nayef Hawatmeh , Jordanian-Palestinian Christian politician. His name can be transliterated from the Arabic in many ways; variants include Naif Hawatma, Niaf Hawathme, etc....

, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist, secular political and military organization. It is also frequently referred to as the Democratic Front, or al-Jabha al-Dimuqratiyah...

 (DFLP), the land was to be used to construct "[...] eight Jewish industrial villages, in implementation of the so-called Galilee Development Plan of 1975. In hailing this plan, the Ministry of Agriculture openly declared that its primary purpose was to alter the demographic nature of Galilee in order to create a Jewish majority in the area." Ori Nir writes in Ha'aretz that only 31 percent of the land in question, or less than one-third, was actually Arab-owned and that some of the expropriated land was to be used to expand the Arab village of Makar near Acre
Acre, Israel
Acre , is a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country....

 and to build public buildings in Arab towns. Orly Halpern of The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as The Palestine Post. The daily readership numbers do not approach those of the major Hebrew newspapers....

writes that the lands were confiscated by the government for security purposes, and that they were subsequently used to build a military training camp, as well as new Jewish settlements.

Yifat Holzman-Gazit places the 1976 announcement within the framework of a larger plan devised in 1975. Some 1900 dunams of privately owned Arab land were to be expropriated to expand the Jewish town of Carmiel. Additionally, the plan envisaged the establishment between 1977 and 1981 of 50 new Jewish settlements known as mitzpim (singular: mitzpe) which would consist of fewer than 20 families each. The plan called for these to be located between clusters of Arab villages in the central Galilee affecting some 20,000 dunams (30% of which were to be expropriated from Arabs, 15% from Jews, with the remainder constituting state-owned land). David McDowall identifies the resumption of land seizures in the Galilee and the acceleration of land expropriations in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...

 in the mid-1970s as the immediate catalyst for both the Land Day demonstration and similar demonstrations that were taking place contemporaneously in the West Bank. He writes: "Nothing served to bring the two Palestinian communities together politically more than the question of land."

The protest of 1976

The government decision to confiscate the land was accompanied by the declaration of a curfew
Curfew
A curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...

 to be imposed on the villages of Sakhnin, Arraba, Deir Hanna
Deir Hanna
Deir Hanna is a local council in the North District of Israel, located on the hills of the Lower Galilee, southeast of Acre. At the end of 2005, the town had a population of 8,500 approximately 80% of them being Muslims and the remaining 20% being Christian....

, Tur'an
Tur'an
Tur'an is an Israeli-Arab local council in the North District of Israel. It is located on Mount Tur'an near the main road from Haifa to Tiberias, and about north of Nazareth...

, Tamra
Tamra
Tamra is an Israeli Arab city in the North District of Israel located in the Lower Galilee north of the city of Shefa-'Amr and approximately east of Akko . The name Tamra means date palm in Arabic...

, and Kabul
Kabul, Israel
Kabul is an Arab town in the North District of Israel, located southeast of Acre and north of Shefa-'Amr.- History :Kabul is the Biblical Cabul mentioned by Joshua. It was assigned to the Tribe of Asher . King Solomon handed it over to Hiram I, the king of Phoenicia, because he helped Solomon...

, effective from 5 p.m. on March 29, 1976. Local Arab leaders from the Rakah
Rakah
Rakah may refer to:* Maki , a communist party in Israel, now renamed Maki* Raka'ah, one unit of Islamic prayer, or Salah...

 party, such as Tawfiq Ziad
Tawfiq Ziad
Tawfiq Ziad was a Palestinian politician well-known for his "poetry of protest".-Biography:Born in the Galilee, Ziad studied literature in Russia...

, who also served as the mayor of Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...

, responded by calling for a day of general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

s and protests against the confiscation of lands to be held on March 30. The government declared all demonstrations illegal and threatened to fire 'agitators', such as schoolteachers who encouraged their students to participate, from their jobs. The threats were not effective, however, and many teachers led their students out of the classrooms to join the general strike and marches that took place throughout the Arab towns in Israel, from the Galilee in the north to the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...

 in south. Solidarity strikes were also held almost simultaneously in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...

, Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

, and in most of the Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...

 camps in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

.

The events of the day were unprecedented. According to the International Jewish Peace Union, "To preempt incidents inside Israel on Land Day, about 4,000 policemen, including a helicopter-borne tactial unit and army units, were deployed in the Galilee [...]" During the protests, four unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...

 (IDF) and two more by police. Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin write that three of the dead were women, and that, "the army was allowed to drive armoured vehicles
Armoured personnel carrier
An armoured personnel carrier is an armoured fighting vehicle designed to transport infantry to the battlefield.APCs are usually armed with only a machine gun although variants carry recoilless rifles, anti-tank guided missiles , or mortars...

 and tanks along the unpaved roads of various villages of the Galilee." About 100 Arabs were wounded and hundreds of others were arrested.

The New York Times reports that the killings were carried out by police during "riots in the Galilee region to protest over Israeli expropriation of Arab land." In Arutz Sheva
Arutz Sheva
Arutz Sheva is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism. It offers online news in English, Hebrew, French, Spanish and Russian. Arutz Sheva offers free podcasts, live streaming radio, a daily email news update, streaming video and 24 hour updated text news...

, Ezra HaLevi writes that the riots started the night before, "with Israeli-Arabs throwing rocks and firebombs at police and soldiers. The riots continued the next day and intensified, resulting in many wounded members of Israeli security forces and the death of the six Arab rioters." Yosef Goell, writing in The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as The Palestine Post. The daily readership numbers do not approach those of the major Hebrew newspapers....

, says that, "What actually set off the rioting that led to the deaths was a wild attack by hundreds of inflamed young Arabs on an unsuspecting IDF convoy driving on the road by the villages of Sakhnin, Arrabe and Deir Hanna. There was no prior provocation on the part of that IDF convoy, unless one insists on seeing a provocation in the very presence of an Israeli army unit in the heart of Israeli Galilee."

A 2003 Israeli government document notes that, "Arab public figures tried to limit the protests, but lost control over the events. The protestors burnt tires, blocked roads, and threw rocks and molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail
The Molotov cocktail, also known as the petrol bomb, gasoline bomb, Molotov bomb, fire bottle, fire bomb, or simply Molotov, is a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons...

s." Placing the six fatalities within the context of "severe clashes" between protestors and security forces, it is also noted that there were many injuries on both sides. Baruch Kimmerling
Baruch Kimmerling
Baruch Kimmerling was an Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon his death in 2007, The Times described him as "the first academic to use scholarship to reexamine the founding tenets of Zionism and the Israeli State"...

 and Joel S. Migdal write that Land Day differed from the Kafr Qasim massacre
Kafr Qasim massacre
The Kafr Qasim massacre took place in the Israeli Arab village of Kafr Qasim situated on the Green Line, at that time, the de facto border between Israel and the West Bank on October 29, 1956. It was carried out by the Israel Border Police and resulted in 48 Arab civilians dead, including 6 women...

 in that the Palestinians in Israel exhibited a "[...] daring confidence and political awareness totally lacking in 1956; this time Arab citizens were not passive and submissive. Instead they initiated and coordinated political activity at the national level, responding to police brutality with their own violence."

Impact

Within the Palestinian community in Israel, there was fury toward the state and the police and mourning over the dead, but there was also the emergence of a new national pride. A split erupted between the Arab political parties of Rakah
Rakah
Rakah may refer to:* Maki , a communist party in Israel, now renamed Maki* Raka'ah, one unit of Islamic prayer, or Salah...

 and Abnaa al-Balad. Committed to a two-state solution
Two-state solution
The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the consensus solution that is currently under discussion by the key parties to the conflict, most recently at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007...

 to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...

, Rakah held major reservations about the involvement of Palestinians from the West Bank. Conversely, Abnaa al-Balad's commitment to the establishment a single democratic Palestine saw the issues of land, equality, the refugees and the occupation as "a comprehensive, integral and indivisible whole." While Rakah remained committed to a two-state solution, it charted a delicate balance, expressing a Palestinian identity more clearly so as to be more in tune with community sentiment. For example, shortly after Land Day, Tawfiq Ziad declared that, "From now on there will be no communities and religious groups but only a single Arab minority, part of the Palestinian nation."

Land Day also resulted in the Arabs gaining a presence in Israeli politics in that they could no longer be ignored. Arab civil society in Israel began coordinating with one another more and protests against government policies became more frequent with a focus on three major issues: land and planning policies, socioeconomic conditions, and Palestinian national rights.

The protest did little to stop the 1975 land expropriation plan. The number of mitzpim established reached 26 in 1981 and 52 in 1988. These mitzpim and the "development towns" of Upper Nazareth, Ma'alot, Migdal Ha'emeq and Carmiel significantly altered the demographic composition of the Galilee. While Arabs had comprised 92% of the population of the Galilee in the years following Israel's establishment, by 1994, that number was reduced to 72% out of a regional population of 680,000, with Jews making up the remaining 28%. Large-scale expropriations of land in the Galilee have generally been avoided by Israeli governments since the 1980s.

Studies of Israeli media coverage

Israeli media coverage of Land Day has been analyzed and critiqued by Israeli academics. Alina Koren's 1994 study of seven major Israeli newspapers found that coverage of the preparations and outcome of the day was extensive in March-April 1976, with reports relying almost entirely on statements from official Israeli information sources such as ministers, advisers or "experts on Arabs." Hardly any space was devoted to the voices of Arab organizers and participants. All of the newspapers examined, whatever their ideological differences, minimized the causes, emphasizing instead two main themes: portraying the demonstrations as the work of a marginal and unrepresentative minority and describing them as a potential threat to state security and law and order. Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman write: "Of special importance is the finding that all the newspapers delegitimized the participants, as communists, nationalists, extremists, agitators, inciters, enemies or violent people."

Bar-Tal and Teichman also cite a 2000 study by professors Gadi Wolfsfeld, Eli Avraham and Issam Aburaiya that analyzed coverage by Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

and Yediot Aharonot of the annual commemorations between 1977 and 1997 and found that reports prior to the event each year also relied heavily on news items from the police and military sources. The focus was on security preparations, with reports on Arabs limited to the agitation and incitement put forward by their leadership. Information on the reasons for the protest was provided in between 6% to 7% of the stories published. Almost all of the reporters were Jewish, and only Haaretz had a reporter specially assigned to cover the Arab population. The event was framed within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict with Arab demonstrators defined as enemies, rather than citizens making demands of their government. A March 22, 1997 editorial in Yediot Ahronoth for example read: "The right to protest does not include the right to run riot, to close roads, to throw stones at passing vehicles ... Again, it has to be made clear to Israeli Arabs that most of their Israeliness is based on their loyalty that they owe to their country and its laws. If they don't want these laws no one is preventing them from leaving."

Legacy

For Palestinians, Land Day has since become a day of commemoration
Commemoration
Commemoration may refer to:*Commemoration , an observance of the Church of England*Commemoration , a prayer of the Roman Catholic Church...

 and tribute to those who have fallen in the struggle to hold onto their land and identity. Often serving as a day for the expression of political discontent for Arab citizens of Israel
Arab citizens of Israel
Arab citizens of Israel refers to citizens of Israel who are not Jewish, and whose cultural and linguistic heritage or ethnic identity is Arab....

, particularly surrounding issues of equal land and citizenship rights, in 1988, they declared that Land Day should serve as "a Palestinian-Israeli civil national day of commemoration and a day of identification with Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, to be marked by yearly demonstrations and general strikes."

Not only did Land Day work to forge political solidarity among Arab citizens of Israel, but it also worked "[...] in cementing the acceptance of the "1948 Arabs" back into the larger Palestinian world and into the heart of mainstream Palestinian nationalism." The day is commemorated annually by Palestinians in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...

, Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

, East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...

, and further afield in refugee camps and among the Palestinian diaspora
Palestinian diaspora
Palestinian diaspora is a term used to describe Palestinians living outside of historic Palestine - an area today known as Israel and the Palestinian territories or the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip...

 worldwide. In 2007, the Press Center of the Palestinian National Authority
Palestinian National Authority
The Palestinian Authority is the administrative organization established to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

 described it "...as a remarkable day in the history of the Palestinian people's struggle, as the Palestinians in such a particular day embrace the land of their ancestors, their identity and their existence."

Annual commemorative events and protests (2000–2009)

An Israeli judiciary
Israeli judicial system
The Israeli judicial system consists of secular courts and religious courts. The law courts constitute a separate and independent unit of Israel's Ministry of Justice...

 study reports that the general strike and marches carried out in Israel during the annual commemoration of 2000 generally proceeded peacefully, with the exception of the protest in Sakhnin
Sakhnin
Sakhnin is a city in Israel's North District. It is located in the Lower Galilee, about east of Acre. Sakhnin was declared a city in 1995. Its population of 25,100 is Arab, mostly Muslim with a sizable Christian minority. It is located on the site of the ancient Jewish town Sikhnin, which...

. There, hundreds of youth gathered and moved towards the Israeli military base adjacent to the village to the west. Uprooting the fences, they penetrated the base, and waved the Palestinian flag
Palestinian flag
The Palestinian flag is based on the Flag of the Arab Revolt, and is used to represent the Palestinian people , and the Palestinian Authority.-Description:...

 inside. Arab public figures who were there to make speeches attempted to subdue them, but were met with hostility and even beatings. Border police forces who arrived to reinforce the base were stoned by the protestors, some of whom were wearing masks and set fires in the woods. Tear gas and rubber bullets
Rubber Bullets
"Rubber Bullets" is a song by 10cc from their debut self-titled album.Written and sung by Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Graham Gouldman and produced by 10cc, "Rubber Bullets" was the band's first number one single in the United Kingdom, spending a single week at the top in June 1973. It fared worse...

 were used to push the protestors back towards the main road where clashes continued. Muhammad Zidan, Head of the Arab Higher Followup Committee, was among those wounded in the clashes, and a 72-year old woman from Sakhnin was reported to have died in the hospital after injuries sustained from tear gas inhalation. A 2006 report in The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as The Palestine Post. The daily readership numbers do not approach those of the major Hebrew newspapers....

states that in annual commemorations of the day by Arab citizens today, Israeli security forces are on alert but do not interfere in the protests.

During the Second Intifada in 2001, on the 25th anniversary of Land Day, which fell on a Friday, the weekly "Day of Rage", Palestinians were called upon to demonstrate. Tens of thousands of Arab citizens, joined by some Jews, demonstrated in peaceful marches inside Israel, carrying Palestinian flags. During demonstrations in the West Bank, four Palestinians were killed and 36 wounded in Nablus
Nablus
Nablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.Founded by the...

 when Israeli forces used live ammunition against protesters throwing stones and molotov cocktails. In Ramallah
Ramallah
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...

, one Palestinian was shot dead and 11 others injured when soldiers clashed with 2,000 demonstrators who burned pictures of Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....

 and waved Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i and Palestinian flags; Palestinian gunmen also joined the clashes after an hour, drawing heavy Israeli fire from tank-mounted machine guns. There were also demonstrations in the Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

 and in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilwa in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

.

In the Land Day demonstrations of 2002, Arab citizens of Israel expressed their solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, speaking out against the "Israeli siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...

's headquarters
Mukataa
Mukataa is the name used to refer to the offices and administrative centers of the Palestinian National Authority.Mukataas were mostly built during the British Mandate as Tegart forts and were used both as British government centers and as dwellings for the British administrative staff. Some...

." The 2005 Land Day commemorations were dedicated to the plight of the unrecognized villages
Unrecognized villages
The term Unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel refers to Arab villages in the Negev and the Galilee which the Israeli government does not recognize as legal settlements. Approximately half of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in 39-45 such villages...

 in the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...

, where organizers said 80,000 Arab citizens live without access to basic amenities and 30,000 homes have received demolition orders
House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
House demolition is a controversial tactic used by the Israeli Defence Forces and Israeli settlers in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip against Palestinians....

. Marches in 2008 included one organized in Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...

 where 1,000 Arab citizens used the Land Day commemorations to bring attention what they described as an acceleration in land confiscations in the city, with many complaining that they were facing evictions and demolition orders designed to force them out of their homes in order to settle Jews from abroad in their place.

Calls to launch non-violent resistance
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...

 actions to protest against ongoing land confiscations regularly occur on Land Day. For example, the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights issued a press release for Land Day 2006, calling for "boycott, divestment, and sanctions
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions refers to a campaign first initiated on 9 July 2005 by 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations in support of the Palestinian cause ".....

 against Israel" and an end to "racial discrimination, occupation
Military occupation
Military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The territory then becomes occupied territory.-Military occupation and the laws of war:...

, and colonization." During the commemorations for Land Day in 2009, a group of 50 Palestinian women singing Palestinian nationalist
Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people. It has roots in Pan-Arabism and other movements rejecting colonialism and calling for national independence. More recently, Palestinian Nationalism is expressed through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict...

 songs by Marcel Khleifi and some internationals gathered at the Damascus Gate
Damascus Gate
Damascus Gate is the main entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem. It is located in the wall on the city's northwest side where the highway leads out to Nablus, and from there, in times past, to the capital of Syria, Damascus; as such, its modern English name is Damascus Gate, and its modern Hebrew...

 of the Old City of Jerusalem, to hand out posters and T-shirts calling for a boycott of Israeli products.

Also in 2009, thousands of Arab citizens, some carrying Palestinian flags, marched through the towns of Arrabe and Sakhnin, under the banner, "We are all united under Israeli fascism and racism." Arab Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...

 member Talab el-Sana called upon the government, "to put a stop to the racist plans of Judaizing the Galilee and Negev and adopt development policies for all the Galilee and Negev's residents". Ynet
Ynet
Ynet is the most popular Israeli news and general content website. It is owned by the same conglomerate that operates Yediot Ahronot, the country's secondleading daily newspaper...

 reported that protests by Palestinians were planned in locations worldwide, including the US, Canada, Germany, Finland, France and Belgium, and that the World Social Forum
World Social Forum
The World Social Forum is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization...

 (WSF) announced the launching of a campaign calling on all of its affiliates to excommunicate Israel. Land Day was also commemorated in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila
Shatila refugee camp
The Shatila refugee camp is a long-term refugee camp for Palestinian refugees, set up by UNRWA in 1949. The camp is located within the Lebanese capital Beirut. As of December 2003, it housed 12,235 registered refugees...

 via an art exhibition and musical event, and in the Palestinian territories
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...

, where Palestinians demonstrated and threw stones near the Israeli West Bank barrier
Israeli West Bank barrier
The Israeli West Bank barrier is a separation barrier being constructed by the State of Israel along and within the West Bank. Upon completion, the barrier’s total length will be approximately...

 in Naalin and Jayyous
Jayyous
Jayyous is a Palestinian village near the west border of the West Bank, close to Qalqilya. It is a farming community. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the village had a population of approximately 3,307 inhabitants in 2006....

.

See also

  • Koenig Memorandum
    Koenig Memorandum
    The Koenig Memorandum was a confidential and internal Israeli government document authored in April 1976 by Yisrael Koenig, a member of the Alignment , who served as the Northern District Commissioner of the Ministry of the Interior for 26 years.The document put forward a number of strategic...

  • Nakba Day
    Nakba Day
    Nakba Day is generally commemorated on May 15, the day after the Gregorian calendar date for Israeli independence day...

  • House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
  • October 2000 events
    October 2000 events
    The October 2000 events were a series of protests in Arab villages in northern Israel in October 2000 that turned violent, escalating into clashes between Israeli Arabs and the Israel Police and ending in the deaths of demonstrators.The Or Commission was established to investigate the police...

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