Lecture Draws Attention on the Impact of Land Day on Palestinian Resistance

Palestinian Historian Adel Manna examined the way that “Land Day/Yom Al-Ard” has influenced Palestinian history, and how it was a turning point for raising collective resistance among citizens inside the green line, in a lecture organized ,on March 28, 2016, by the  master’s degree  of Israeli Studies Program .

“Land Day” marks the day when thousands of people who live inside the green line gathered to protest against Israeli government plans to expropriate 60, 000 dunams of Palestinian-owned land in the Galilee. In the resulting confrontations  with the Israeli occupying forces, six Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded and prisoned. Since then, March 30 has been commemorated annually by Palestinians as Land Day (Yom Al- Ard) with collective resistance actions across historic Palestine and in the Palestinian diaspora.

“ Land day was a turning point for Palestinians who live in the occupied 1948 territories”, Manna assured. “ A systematic process of expropriation that had reduced Palestinian land ownership in pre- 1948 Palestine,  generated a collective response of the “Land Day” in March 30, 1976. This day was the first act of mass resistance by Palestinians inside Israel and became a landmark in the Palestinian history of resistance and has imposed itself on the Palestinian national calendar.”

“After the massacres that have been committed against Palestinians who lived inside the green line, especially  the massacre of Kufr Qassem, Palestinians were frightened even to commemorate the massacre for a long period of time, until 1976, in the aftermath of Land Day”, Manna said. “ The continuous  confiscations of land even after the abolition of military control, and the Israeli policies and actions have changed the geographic and demographic realities of the Palestinians inside the occupied 1948 territories.”