MK Haneen Zoubi Speaks at Land Day Commemoration

The anniversary of Land Day on April 4 was observed by the Birzeit University Deanship of Student Affairs and master’s students at Birzeit University Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute of International Studies through a seminar entitled, “We Are Staying as Long as the Thyme and Olives Remain.” Knesset member Haneen Zoubi, former head of Deir Hanna Municipal Council and ex-secretary of the Land Defense committee Raja Khatib spoke, with moderation by Political Science Department chair Abdul Rahman Ibrahim.

Zoubi spoke about racism in Israeli society manifested through land confiscations and house demolitions and its impact on Arab Palestinian determination in Palestine. She said that the struggle continues against the racist Zionist regime that has enacted more than 50 racist laws, including laws prohibiting Palestinians from living on more than 66% of the land of historic Palestine.

Zoubi emphasized that the fundamental question that needs answering by the Palestinian people is how to define themselves as a united national project, and the real struggle of the Palestinians inside historic Palestine is outside the parliament, i.e. at sit-ins, strikes, demonstrations and popular committees.

Khatib agreed that the land represents the people’s focus at every time and in every place, and the need to defend it as it forms a protective shield for the people, especially in light of Israeli policies of dispossession and expropriation of land.

Ibrahim said that the importance of Land Day stems from the fact that the land is the center of the conflict and rejection of the Israeli argument that Palestine was a "land without a nation.”

Land Day is marked every year on March 30, commemorating the events of March 1976 and the confiscation by Israel of thousands of dunums owned by Palestinians living in historic Palestine, during which Palestinians were killed and wounded.