Palestine: Land Day, March 30th

On March 30, 1976, Israeli police opened fire, killing six people, wounding dozens and arresting hundreds. It was the first time since 1948 that Palestinian citizens of Israel had organized a response to Israeli policy as a national Palestinian collective. Since then, this date has become Land Day for Palestinians around the world, symbolizing their attachment to the land, their resistance and their struggle against occupation and colonization.

To stay, to cultivate, is to resist!

Since then, the dispossession of the land of the Palestinian people has never ceased. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza in 2024, the Israeli army has confiscated an additional 41 km2 of land in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The number of settlers has increased 5-fold in 30 years, to almost 800,000 today. In addition to the authorized settlements, which will exceed 10,000 units in the first quarter of 2025, i.e. more than in the whole of 2024, the Israeli state systematically validates all unauthorized settlements, the outposts set up by the most aggressive settlers, and sends its army to protect them.

The colonization of the West Bank continues, more than ever, and the linking of settlements accentuates the fragmentation of territories under Palestinian control. In Gaza, in addition to continuing military aggression, the genocidal state’s political offensive includes the departure of Hamas leaders to allow implementation of the Trump plan, the ‘voluntary’ exile of Gazans. The aim is to get 40% of them to leave! It’s easy to see what’s at stake, and the vital need for Palestinians to stay, cultivate and resist.

A provocation

Netanyahu’s decision to build two new roads in the occupied West Bank on the very day of March 30, 2025, should be seen as yet another provocation. The effect will be to reinforce the settlements in the Ma’ale Adumim region, east of Jerusalem, where more than 40,000 settlers are already illegally established. The Israeli NGO “Peace Now” denounces this “new apartheid road”, which will annex around 3% of the West Bank - yet another step towards the physical and political liquidation of the Palestinian question.

L’Anticapitaliste 2 April 2025