Occupied Palestine – Forty-six years ago today, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed six Palestinian citizens of 1948-occupied Palestine.
That day, they were protesting the Israeli occupation expropriation of about 1,500 acres of their land in the Galilee.
Since then, March 30 has been known as Land Day.
It has become a major commemorative date in the Palestinian calendar and an important event in the Palestinian collective narrative.
Land Day, according to the Palestinians, emphasises their resistance to Israeli colonisation and steadfastness.
The 1976 protests were a result of mass collective action across historic Palestine.
Palestinians were resisting not only the theft of land but also overall settler colonial policies of erasure.
There were also protests in the Al-Naqab and Wadi Ara.
However, most of the action took place in six villages in the Galilee.
The six villages are Sakhnin, Arraba, Deir Hanna, Tur’an, Tamra, and Kabul.
The Israeli occupation, however, met the demonstrations with serious aggression and violence, as there were hundreds of injuries.
This year, the commemoration of Land Day comes as Palestinian people are resisting ethnic cleansing from the river to the sea.
They resisting it from al-Walaja outside Jerusalem, to Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills, to Al-Naqab desert in ’48 Palestine and beyond.
