Land Day

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Land Day
Land Day poster
Observed byPalestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories
DateMarch 30
Next timeMarch 30, 2024 (2024-03-30)
FrequencyAnnual

Land Day (

Arabic: يَوْم اَلْأَرْض, romanizedYawm al-ʾArḍ; Hebrew: יוֹם הַאֲדָמָה, romanizedYom HaAdama), recurring on March 30, is a day of commemoration for Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians
of the events of that date in 1976 in Israel.

In 1976, in response to the

Israeli government's announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunams of land for state purposes, a general strike and marches were organized in Arab towns from the Galilee to the Negev.[1][2] In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army and police, six unarmed[3] Arab citizens were killed, about one hundred were wounded, and hundreds of others arrested.[2][4][5][6]

Scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict 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 collective.[1] An important annual day of commemoration in the Palestinian national political calendar ever since, it is marked not only by Arab citizens of Israel, but also by Palestinians all over the world.[7]

Background

fellahat) from Battir, a village between Jerusalem and Bethlehem
taking produce to market (1910)

The

Arabs who remained inside what became the state of Israel, serving as the source of communal identity, honor, and purpose.[8][10]

The Israeli government adopted in 1950 the

Salman Abu-Sitta estimates that between 1948 and 2003 more than 1,000 square kilometers (390 sq mi) of land was expropriated from Arab citizens of Israel (present-absentees and otherwise).[12]

According to Oren Yiftachel, public protest against state policies and practices from among the 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 peripheral position in the new Israeli state.[13] 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.[14] While the political movement Al-Ard ("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 protests staged annually by the Communist party.[13]

Catalyzing events

Arraba
from the road leading to its northern limit

The government of Israel declared its intention to

Arraba, of which 6,300 dunams was Arab-owned.[15] On March 11, 1976, the government published the expropriation plan.[16]

Yiftachel writes that the land confiscations and expansion of Jewish settlements in the northern Galilee formed part of the government's continuing strategy aimed at the Judaization of the Galilee which itself constituted both a response to and catalyst for "Palestinian resistance", culminating in the events of Land Day.[17] According to Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (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."[3][18] Orly Helpern of The Jerusalem Post 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.[3]

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).[19] David McDowall identifies the resumption of land seizures in the Galilee and the acceleration of land expropriations in the West Bank 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."[20]

Protest of 1976

The government decision to confiscate the land was accompanied by the declaration of a

The events of the day were unprecedented.[23] According to the International Jewish Peace Union, "To preempt incidents inside Israel on Land Day, about 4,000 policemen, including a helicopter-borne tactical unit and army units, were deployed in the Galilee [...]"[25] During the protests, four unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and two more by police.[3] Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin write that three of the dead were women, and that, "the army was allowed to drive armoured vehicles and tanks along the unpaved roads of various villages of the Galilee."[23] About 100 Arabs were wounded and hundreds of others were arrested.[4][5]

The New York Times reported that the killings were carried out by police during "riots in the Galilee region to protest over Israeli expropriation of Arab land."[26] In Arutz Sheva, 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."[27] Yosef Goell, writing in The Jerusalem Post, 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."[28]

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 cocktails." 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.[29] Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal write that Land Day differed from the Kafr Qasim massacre 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."[30]

Impact

During the Land Day events, a new sense of national pride, together with anger toward the state and police and sorrow over the dead protesters, developed among the Arab community in Israel.

Abnaa al-Balad. Committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 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."[20] 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."[20]

Government compound named after Yitzhak Rabin in Upper Nazareth

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.[13]

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

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.[19]

Studies of Israeli media coverage

Israeli

extremists, agitators, inciters, enemies or violent people."[31]

Bar-Tal and Teichman also cite a 2000 study by professors Gadi Wolfsfeld, Eli Avraham and Issam Aburaiya that analyzed coverage by

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% and 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."[31]

Legacy

Land Day poster (1984) by Abdel Rahman Al Muzain

For Palestinians, Land Day has since become a day of commemoration 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, 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."[3][30]

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."[30] The day is commemorated annually by Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and further afield in refugee camps and among the Palestinian diaspora worldwide.[18] In 2007, the Press Center of the Palestinian National Authority 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."[32] However, in recent years, many observers have noted that the Arab population inside Israel seems less enthusiastic about the protests, despite the organizers' efforts to promote hype. Many see this as a sign of growing reconciliation on the grass-roots level.[33]

Annual commemoration and protests

A Palestinian woman and child at a Land Day rally in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip

An

rubber bullets 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.[29] A 2006 report in The Jerusalem Post 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.[3]

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.[34] Tens of thousands of Arab citizens, joined by some Jews, demonstrated in peaceful marches inside Israel, carrying Palestinian flags.[34] During demonstrations in the West Bank, four Palestinians were killed and 36 wounded in Nablus when Israeli forces used live ammunition against protesters throwing stones and molotov cocktails.[34] In Ramallah, one Palestinian was shot dead and 11 others injured when soldiers clashed with 2,000 demonstrators who burned pictures of Ariel Sharon and waved Iraqi and Palestinian flags; Palestinian gunmen also joined the clashes after an hour, drawing heavy Israeli fire from tank-mounted machine guns.[34] There were also demonstrations in the Gaza Strip and in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in Lebanon.[34]

Theodosios (Atallah Hanna) and the Palestinian singer Manal Mousa
by giving each of them one of his artworks in The Palestinian Land Day celebration in Dortmund Germany

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

demolition orders.[36] Marches in 2008 included one organized in Jaffa where 1,000 Arab citizens used the Land Day commemorations to bring attention to 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.[37]

Calls to launch

Old City of Jerusalem, to hand out posters and T-shirts calling for a boycott of Israeli products.[39]

Also in 2009, thousands of Arab citizens, some carrying Palestinian flags, marched through the towns of

In anticipation of Land Day protests of 2012, Israel sealed off the

Israeli settlers).[42] The protests were held in Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces fired at protestors who tried to cross the security fence, resulting in one man killed and 37 injured.[43] At the Qalandia checkpoint, rock-throwing Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers firing rubber bullets and stun grenades, resulting in 39 Palestinians being injured.[44] In Jordan, 15,000 people, including Palestinians joined in a peaceful sit-in. Palestinian refugees also held demonstrations near Beaufort Castle, Lebanon.[44]

During the

2018 Land Day protests, 17 Palestinians were killed, including five Hamas members,[45][46] and more than 1,400 were injured in shootings by the Israeli army during a march calling for the Palestinian right of return at the borders with Gaza.[47]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Levy and Weiss, 2002, p. 200.
  2. ^ a b Khouri, Jack; Stern, Yoav (June 15, 2008). "Israeli Arab leader on Land Day: We'll fight Israel's 'rising fascism'". Haaretz.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Orly Halpern (March 30, 2006). "Israel's Arabs to Mark Land Day". The Jerusalem Post, English Online Edition. Retrieved November 1, 2006.
  4. ^ a b Byman, 2002, p. 132.
  5. ^ a b "Remembering Land Day". BBC News. March 30, 2001. Retrieved November 1, 2006.
  6. Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original
    on September 16, 2011.
  7. ^ Schulz and Hammer, 2003, p. 77.
  8. ^ a b King-Irani, Laurie (Fall 2000). "Land, Identity and the Limits of Resistance in the Galilee". Middle East Report. No. 216, Losing Ground? The Politics of Environment and Space. Archived from the original on January 8, 2001. Retrieved March 24, 2024.
  9. ^ Herb and Kaplan, 1999, p. 260. "[...] the geographical scale of the Arab identity in Israel has changed dramatically a few times during the twentieth century. Prior to the disastrous 1948 defeat, they were an integral part of the agrarian Palestinian society that was gradually building its national consciousness."
  10. ^ Nassar and Heacock, 1990, p. 29. A popular slogan that emerged among Palestinians after the 1967 war was al-Ard qabl al'Ard ("land before honor").
  11. ^ a b Uri Davis. "A Democratic State for all of its Citizens and Refugees". MidEast Journal 2001, Original Abridged version in Ha'aretz, June 25, 2001. Archived from the original on February 14, 2007.
  12. ^ Salman Abu Sitta in Masalha and Said, 2005, p. 287, footnote 33. Sitta also gives an estimate for the total land area owned by Arab citizens prior to the expropriations: 1,400 square kilometers (540 sq mi). Half of this total, some 700 square kilometers (270 sq mi), had been expropriated by the early 1960s.
  13. ^ a b c Yiftachel, 2006, p. 170.
  14. ^ Payes, 2005, p. 7.
  15. ^ Endelman, 1997, p. 292.
  16. Jerusalem Post
  17. ^ Yiftachel, 2006, p. 69.
  18. ^ a b Nayef Hawatmeh (April 7–13, 2005). "Remembering Land Day". Al-Ahram Weekly Online. Archived from the original on October 29, 2006. Retrieved November 1, 2006.
  19. ^ a b Holzman-Gazit, 2007, p. 140.
  20. ^ a b c McDowall, 1990, p. 157-158.
  21. ^ Kimmerling and Migdal, 1993, p. 178.
  22. . pp.130,131
  23. ^ a b c d Abdo and Lentin, 2002, p. 139.
  24. ^ Frankel, 1988, p. 40.
  25. ^ International Jewish Peace Union (IJPU), 1987, p. 26.
  26. ^ "After the War: Arab Strike Held Only in Occupied Areas". The New York Times. March 31, 1991. Retrieved February 1, 2006.
  27. ^ HaLevi, Ezra (March 31, 2006). "Israeli Arabs Observe 'Land Day' in Lod, Wave Hamas Flags". Arutz Sheva. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  28. ^ Yosef Goell (March 26, 2001). "Land Day? No: Call it 'Lie Day'". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on April 5, 2007.
  29. ^ a b State of Israel Judicial Authority. "The State of Israel Judicial Authority: Investigation committees" (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on March 2, 2009. Retrieved July 30, 2009.
  30. ^ a b c d Kimmerling and Migdal, 2006, p. 196.
  31. ^ a b Bar-Tal and Teichman, 2005, pp. 153–154.
  32. ^ "On the eve of Land Day, Israel Continues Aggression". International Press Center, Palestine. May 9, 2006. Archived from the original on August 28, 2006. Retrieved May 28, 2007.
  33. ^ Jerusalem Post Editorial (April 2, 2014). "Lackluster Land Day". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
  34. ^ a b c d e "Five Palestinians Killed as War of Words Flares in the Middle East". Mid-East Realities. March 30, 2001. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  35. ^ Agence France Press (March 30, 2002). "Israeli Arabs Protest Against Arafat Siege on "Land Day"". Common Dreams News Center. Archived from the original on October 19, 2006. Retrieved November 1, 2006.
  36. ^ "Israeli Arab groups mark Land Day". BBC News. March 30, 2005. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  37. ^ "Palestinians protest over evictions". Al Jazeera English. March 28, 2008. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  38. ^ "Press Release: Palestine Land Day 2006". BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. March 30, 2006. Archived from the original on April 15, 2006. Retrieved March 30, 2006.
  39. ^ "Land Day Protest: Palestinian Women's Group Rallies at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem". Alternative Information Center. March 30, 2009. Archived from the original on October 12, 2009. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  40. ^ a b Sharon Roffe-Ofir (March 30, 2009). "Arab Leaders on Land Day: We're not Afraid of Right". Ynetnews. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  41. ^ Sameh A. Habeeb (March 30, 2009). "The Palestine Telegraph". Retrieved August 1, 2009.
  42. ^ "Israel seals off West Bank for Land Day protests". CBC News. March 30, 2012.
  43. ^ Guy Azriel (March 30, 2012). "Israeli forces clash with Palestinian protesters marking Land Day". CNN.
  44. ^ a b "One Palestinian killed, scores injured, as Israeli troops clash with Land Day marchers". Al Arabiya. March 30, 2012.
  45. ^ "Hamas says 5 killed in Gaza border clashes were its members". Ynetnews. March 31, 2018. Retrieved March 31, 2018.
  46. ^ "Hamas admits 5 of its gunmen among 16 Gazans killed in Friday's border violence". The Times of Israel. March 31, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  47. ^ "Israeli army kills 17 Palestinians in Gaza protests". www.aljazeera.com.

Bibliography

External links

  • Media related to Land Day at Wikimedia Commons