From Palestine to Honduras, every day is Land Day

Berta Cáceres was one of three indigenous land rights activists murdered in Central America in March. (CIDH)

Protesters march in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, against Israel’s planned demolition of the village, on 30 March. Annual Land Day demonstrations commemorate the six Palestinian citizens of Israel shot dead by Israeli forces during mass protests against land seizures in the Galilee on the same date in 1976-Oren ZivActiveStills

Budour Youssef Hassan-6 April 2016

Berta Cáceres was one of three indigenous land rights activists murdered in Central America in March. (CIDH)

On 30 March 1976, Palestinian citizens of Israel declared a general strike and held large demonstrations against land expropriations by Israeli authorities in the Galilee.

Now observed annually as Land Day, these events marked the first organized popular rebellion by Palestinians inside present-day Israel. They had undergone three decades of disenfranchisement and intimidation.

In 1948, Zionist militias, which would later constitute the Israeli army, occupied the majority of historic Palestine.

Using force and the threat of force, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled.

Those who remained in the territory then unilaterally declared as Israel were granted Israeli citizenship, but the new authorities imposed military rule on them that was not lifted until 1966.

Even after military rule, systematic Israeli attempts to squelch Palestinian dissent and colonize both land and minds continued.

The Zionist project is fixated on controlling as much land as possible with as few Palestinians on it as possible. It has used both naked violence and legal frameworks to gradually reduce Palestinian land ownership in present-day Israel to just a tiny fraction of what it was before 1948.

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