Land Day remembered
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 3/30/1998

Land Day, rain was falling heavily throughout Monday as thousands of Palestinians living in Israel and in Palestinian areas took to the streets to mark the Land Day which falls every 30 March. Rain was among a number of factors that most demonstrations ended without any major violent clash between the Palestinians and Israeli troops, and heads of the Arab community in Israel made every effort to avoid further escalation.

All in all, at least seven Palestinians were injured in clashes with the Israeli troops in Ramallah and Jenin on the West Bank. But inside Israel, the three major rallies that the Arab Supreme Follow-UP Committee called for ended somehow peacefully. While the rain in Arrabeh, Galilee, and Taibeh in the Triangle, washed off some of the participants' anger at Israel's land expropriation policy, the stormy sand in the southern desert of Naqab brought only a few hundreds to the main rally in Tal Al Na'meh village.

When Latifa, a mother of six, had tears in her eyes, many thought it was the sand to blame. But she vehemently denied and said she was sad because Israel has never given the Bedouins in her area licenses to build houses but lately "has allowed the construction of a number of housing compounds for Palestinian collaborators who worked with the Israeli secret service." Many Arab public figures who participated in the rally spoke strongly against Israel's land confiscation policy and expressed solidarity with plight of the Bedouins.

Large police forces went on alert in most of the Arab towns and villages in Israel as a near-total general strike paralyzed public life in the Arab sector. But in the West Bank towns and villages, the strike was near total but the schools remained open. In most of the schools, at least once class was dedicated to explain to students the meaning of Land Day. They were told of the mass demonstrations that broke out on 30 March 1976 in protest against a decision the Israeli government took at the time to confiscate vast areas of lands. Six Palestinians were shot dead and many others wounded in the clashes that erupted on that day.

Previous Stories:
  Major conflict over Islamic property in Jerusalem   (3/9/1998)
  New laws to confiscate Arab land smacks of apartheid   (9/3/1997)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search