Land Day

Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: recorded30 March 1976. Six killed in a general strike against land confiscation in the Galilee — and a national day made out of it.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredThe land confiscations in the Galilee announced in 1975 — about 20,000 dunums around Sakhnin, Arraba and Deir Hanna — produced Land Day.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredWritten for the Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948, it became the defining anthem of sumud — steadfastness on the land — and is still recited at Land Day commemorations and protests.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredIn 1975 the plan to expropriate a further tranche of land around Sakhnin, Arraba and Deir Hanna produced the mobilisation that culminated in the general strike of 30 March 1976 — Land Day — in which six Palestinian citizens of Israel were shot dead.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredA communist organizer, he was elected to the Knesset in 1973 and became mayor of Nazareth in 1975 — a post he held until his death — leading the city through Land Day in 1976 and decades of struggle over land, budgets, and equality.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredThat policy — the "Judaization" of the Galilee — is what brought Palestinians inside Israel into the streets on 30 March 1976, the first Land Day, and it is the frame within which Umm al-Fahm's politics have been conducted ever since.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredLand Day was a turning point: the first time since 1948 that Palestinians inside Israel mobilized as a national collective against state policy, welding their struggle to that of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredIn early 1976 the government announced plans to confiscate some 20,000 dunams, much of it around the villages of Sakhnin, Arraba, and Deir Hanna.

Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: inferredIt has been commemorated every year since, in Israel, the occupied territories, and around the world — most fatefully in 2018, when the Great March of Return in Gaza began on its anniversary.