Land Day 🇵🇸| March 30 2024

(Arabic: يَوْم اَلْأَرْض; Yawm al-ʾArḍ | Hebrew: יוֹם הַאֲדָמָה; Yom HaAdama)

I. Introduction

Observed annually on March 30, Palestinians commemorate the 1976 Land Day. They hold protests and vigils, plant olive trees and in essence re-assert their unequivocal right of return to their land.

This originated as a result of mass collective action across historic Palestine, with both Arab citizens of Israel and those in the Israeli-occupied territories resisting against the expelling & replacing of native Palestinians, the theft of their lands, and overall settler colonial policies of erasure.

The list is long but among those policies are the long-held policy of annexing East Jerusalem; the building of the apartheid wall; the siege on Gaza, separating Palestinian land into non-contiguous units; the constant imprisonment of Palestinians under the charge of being political; the occupation and the checkpoints that make life impossible for ordinary Palestinians, hence encouraging their emigration; the de-development of the Palestinian economy; the policy of home demolitions; the discriminatory policies against Palestinian citizens of Israel that deny them the ability to purchase and lease land; and the non-ending stream of Israeli government permits to build more settlements and expand existing ones.  

The 1976 protest itself did not stop the land expropriation plan, and protestors were instead met with brute force & violence. Israeli police killed six unarmed Palestinian citizens and injured over a hundred.

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II. Israel’s Illegal Settlements

‘Nearly 750,000 Israelis live in 250 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.’

Land Day Poster (Abed Abed El Hameed, 1985)

‘Settlements – illegal under international law – are Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem’

And so today on the occasion of Land Day 2024 (ensuing genocide in Ramadan notwithstanding), we reflect on the BDS National Committee message.

And find ourselves forced again to contend with the accelerated Israeli settlement expansion…

March 6 2024:

‘Earlier this month, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said, “The establishment and continuing expansion of settlements amount to … a war crime under international law.”’

March 22 2024:

‘Most recently, on March 22, 2024, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared Israel was seizing 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank, in a move that would facilitate building more illegal settlements.’

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III. United Nations Security Council

As Israel conducts its sixth month of barbaric genocidal campaign, it blatantly defies the UN Security Council Resolution (S/RES/2728) adopted Monday March 25 2024, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the remainder of Ramadan.

Law & Order

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Palestinian population reduces their biotic footprint and grinds their civic infrastructure down to wilted sands. All this via the unfettered lethal aid of US-arms, ultimately destroying the earth’s capacity to sustain any life in Gaza.

Outside of the annual ~ $3.8 billion in military assistance to Israel, the U.S. this week approved ~$2.5 billion transfer of bombs and fighter jets.‘The new arms package includes more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and Department of State officials, the Washington Post reported on Friday’

The policies of the Biden administration violate both international law, the Geneva Conventions & Additional Protocols (basis for International Humanitarian Law) and domestic law such as Leahy Law.

And so the U.S. government’s pliant policy policing (equation’s variable the participating state(s)) inherently constitutes terrorism… a social reality in which: The United States 🇺🇸 is the dominant sponsor of international terrorism 🇮🇱

Their continued political deviance in facilitating state terror eclipses ANY lackluster friction of facilitated fiction… example below…

lu_lu_mi_bella_vida

A post shared by @lu_lu_mi_bella_vida

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IV. Palestine’s Economy

Israel’s military offensives since October 2023 along with other premeditated acts have exasperated an already dire situation in Gaza. The UNCTAD Rapid Assessment - January 2024 report finds:

‘[…] that if fighting were to stop immediately with reconstruction starting right away, and the 2007-2022 growth trend persists, it would take until 2092 just to restore the GDP levels of 2022, with GDP per capita and socioeconomic conditions declining. 

“However, even with the most optimistic scenario that GDP could grow at 10 per cent annually it would still take Gaza’s GDP per capita until 2035 to pre-blockade level of 2006.” ‘

Compounded with actions like these:

Along with the potential of further economic threat courtesy of Israel's Finance Minister, Israel appears poised to officially strangle an already dying economy ➡️ Collapse of Palestinian Economy

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V. Conclusion

The Israel-Palestine issue DID NOT start October 2023, so please spare us all your limited reading capacity and awareness. This plight has been rampant for over 75 years. And there can never be a Palestinian sovereignty without dismantling Israel’s supremacist racist ideology of Zionism. ALL Palestinian Refugees must be granted the right of return, and ALL War Criminals brought to justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their historic crimes and current criminality.

It is quite the hypocrisy that the U.S. Department of State’s State Sponsors of Terrorism designations don’t reflect inwards because surely we see when it is the powerful themselves holding executive pen power on the definition of terrorism (further augmented by unwavering news media loyalty, and social media suppression), we are left in a vacuum of terror.

One where the massacre of non-Western lives equate to nothing substantial at all 🇵🇸💔🙏

It is the land that has always connected Palestinians with the notion of home – not walls, not houses, not debris or bricks. For this reason, demolishing Palestinian houses may make Palestinians houseless, but they will never be homeless or landless. Because our home is our land.