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Land Day

Land Day
LandDay2.jpg
Land Day poster
Observed by Palestinians
Date March 30
Next time 30 March 2017 (2017-03-30)
Frequency annual

Land Day (Arabic: يوم الأرض‎‎, Yom al-Ard; Hebrew: יוֹם הַאֲדָמָה‎, Yom HaAdama), March 30, is an annual day of commemoration for Palestinians of the events of that date in 1976. In response to the Israeli government's announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunams of land for security and settlement purposes, a general strike and marches were organized in Arab towns from the Galilee to the Negev. In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army and police, six unarmedArab citizens were killed, about one hundred were wounded, and hundreds of others arrested.

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. 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.

The Arabs of Palestine were a largely agrarian people, 75% of whom made their living off the land before the establishment of the Israeli state. After the Palestinian exodus and the effects of the 1948 Arab-Israel 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.


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