Land Day

In the mid-1970s Israel stepped up the expropriation of Arab-owned land in the Galilee as part of an official policy to “Judaize” the region. In early 1976 the government announced plans to confiscate some 20,000 dunams, much of it around the villages of Sakhnin, Arraba, and Deir Hanna. Arab local council heads and political movements, led by the Rakah communist party, called a general strike and day of protest for 30 March 1976.

The government answered with force. The night before, security forces raided towns across the Galilee and the Triangle to arrest organizers, and on the day itself curfews were imposed as thousands marched anyway. The worst clashes came in Sakhnin, Arraba, and Deir Hanna, where soldiers and police fired on demonstrators. Six Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed — in Sakhnin, Arraba, Kafr Kanna, and Tayibe — dozens were wounded, and hundreds were arrested.

Land 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. It 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.