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Palestinian day of commemoration

Land Day (يَوْم اَلْأَرْض; יוֹם הַאֲדָמָה), recurring on March 30, is a day of commemoration for Palestinians, both Arab citizens of Israel and those in the Israeli occupied territories of the events of that date in 1976 in Israel. In 1976, the Israeli government's announced a plan to confiscate some of land for state purposes between the Arab villages of Sakhnin and Arraba, of which was Arab owned. It formed part of the Israeli government's strategy aimed at the Judaization of the Galilee. In response, Arab towns declared a general strike and marches were organized in from the Galilee to the Negev. Arab demonstrators, half of whom were women; injured one hundred more; and arrested hundreds of others. 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.

The Arabs of Mandatory Palestine were a largely agrarian people, 75% of whom made their living off the land before the establishment of the Israeli state. After the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight during the 1948 Palestine war, land continued to play an important role in the lives of the 156,000 Palestinian Arabs 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 to facilitate Jewish immigration to Israel and the absorption of Jewish refugees. Israel's Absentees' Property Law of March 1950 transferred the property rights of absentee owners to a government appointed Custodian of Absentee Property. 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'." Salman Abu Sitta estimates that between 1948 and 2003 more than of land was expropriated from Arab citizens of Israel (present absentees and otherwise). 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. 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 ("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. On March 11, 1976, the government published the expropriation plan. 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. 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." 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."

The government decision to confiscate the land was accompanied by the declaration of a curfew to be imposed on the villages of Sakhnin, Arraba, Deir Hanna, Tur'an, Tamra, and Kabul, effective from 5 p. m. on March 29, 1976. On March 18 the heads of the local Arab councils, members of the Labour Party, met in Shefa 'Amr and voted against supporting the day of action. When news of the decision became public a demonstration developed outside the municipal buildings and was dispersed with tear gas. 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 in south. The events of the day were unprecedented. During the protests, four unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and two more by police. 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." 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." 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." 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. 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."

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

An Israeli judiciary 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. 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 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 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. 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. The 2005 Land Day commemorations were dedicated to the plight of the unrecognized villages in the Negev, where organizers said 80,000 Arab citizens live without access to basic amenities and 30,000 homes have received demolition orders. 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. Calls to launch non violent 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 against Israel" and an end to "racial discrimination, occupation, and colonization." During the commemorations for Land Day in 2009, a group of 50 Palestinian women singing Palestinian nationalist songs by Marcel Khleifi and some internationals gathered at the Damascus Gate 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 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 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 (WSF) announced the launching of a campaign calling on all of its affiliates to excommunicate Israel. Land Day was also commemorated in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp via an art exhibition and musical event, and in the Palestinian territories, where Palestinians demonstrated and threw stones near the Israeli West Bank barrier in Naalin and Jayyous. In anticipation of Land Day protests of 2012, Israel sealed off the West Bank (but the restrictions did not apply to Israeli settlers). 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. At the Qalandia checkpoint, rock throwing Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers firing rubber bullets and stun grenades, resulting in 39 Palestinians being injured. In Jordan, 15,000 people, including Palestinians joined in a peaceful sit in. Palestinian refugees also held demonstrations near Beaufort Castle, Lebanon. 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.