Dear Friend,

On 30 March Palestinians mark Land Day, or Yom al-Ard (يوم الأرض), commemorating the events of 30 March 1976, when six Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli forces during major mobilisations against Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land in the Galilee. Land Day was also significant for re-igniting the national consciousness of the Palestinians living in the lands first occupied by the Zionist state in 1948 and re-centering the question of land within the broader Palestinian struggle.

Defying the fragmentation imposed by occupation and apartheid, Palestinians across historic Palestine and abroad, mark this politically significant date by holding protests and vigils and planting olive trees to reaffirm their connection to the land.

Yom al-Ard is rooted in Palestinian sumud (صمود), or steadfastness, as an important part of resistance to Israeli colonisation of the land. This was also the date chosen by Palestinians in Gaza to mark the beginning of their Great March of Return in 2018, which saw hundreds of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army. 

This is the second Yom al-Ard commemoration to take place during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, now in its eighteenth month, amid the Zionist regime continuing to annex land, expel and kill Palestinians in the West Bank. 

Although the Palestinian people continue to endure the illegal occupation and annexation of their land, they also continue to resist. Their struggle to liberate their homeland from Zionist colonialism lives on. Despite the barbarism unleashed by Israel, which is armed and supported by Western powers, Palestinians loudly proclaim, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, Palestine will be free.

As we mark this year’s Land Day, we recall the words of Tawfik Zayyad, Palestinian poet and leading voice of the 1976 protests, who wrote: