Land Day – 43 Years Later

29 Mar

2:01 AM

Ola Awad, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), commemorated the upcoming anniversary of Land Day, by publishing a report on Thursday, demonstrated that Israeli theft of Palestinian land has persisted, reported Maan News Agency.

On March 30, 1976 the Palestinians in hostoric Palestine, where Israeli was established in 1948 after ethnically cleaning hundreds of villages and towns, protested against the Israeli government announcement to the seizure of 21,000 dunums or 5,189 acres of Palestinian land.

The Israeli police violently suppressed the demonstrations, killing 6 young Palestinians, and injuring and arresting many others.

Every year, Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinians in every part of Palestine and abroad, commemorate Land Day with marches and remembrance.

Land Day 2019 coincides with the one year anniversary of the Great March of Return demonstrations in Gaza, where Palestinians are demanding their right to return to the land that is now known as Israel, as well as an end to the 12 year blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt.

|Palestine Land Day: A Day to Resist and Remember|

During 2018, 312 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including 57 children and 3 women, with nearly 30,000 injured over the same period of time.

The total area of historical Palestine is 27, 000 square kilometres, 85% of which is under Israeli military control.

Therefore only 15% of the ancestral land is available for indigenous Palestinians to cultivate their land.

According to the report an increase in settlement activity was seen over the course of 2018, with the Israeli occupation approving the construction of 9,384 new housing units, as well as the establishment of 9 new settlement outposts.

According to the PCBS report, 7,122 trees were uprooted in 2018, with over one million trees destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces between the years 2000 and 2019.

More Israeli violations against the Palestinian people include home demolitions, forced displacement of communities, and families, not to mention the daily incursions by Israeli forces into countless neighbourhoods across the West Bank.

Also Read: Al-Jazeera – Al-Nakba: The History of Palestine Since 1799