Gaza, ALRAY - Palestinians are marking on Thursday the 47th anniversary of Land Day by holding a series of activities, in remembrance of the expropriation of Palestinian land by the Israeli occupation government on 30 March 1976.
On 30 March 1976, the Israeli occupation authorities expropriated nearly 21,000 dunums of Palestinian land in the towns of Arraba, Sakhnin and others, sparking a mass popular Palestinian intifada (uprising). six Palestinians were killed by the occupation forces on that day.
The land expropriation order coincided with a curfew by the Israeli occupation authorities, which started at five o’clock a day earlier in several Palestinian towns including Sakhnin, Arraba, Deir Hanna, Tur'an, and Tamra.
The Palestinian people rejected this move and answered a call by the Palestinian Land Defense Committee by taking to the streets to protest the Israeli scheme to illegally expropriate their land.
The Israeli occupation forces violently suppressed the popular, peaceful demonstrations, killing at least six Palestinian citizens, including a young woman and a child, and injuring hundreds of others.
The Israeli occupation government called the scheme of expropriation “Galilee Development Project”, which was aimed at completely Judaizing the whole area. If implemented, the scheme would have a direct impact on about 75 per cent of the Palestinians, who are living and working on their land.
Between 1948 and 1972, the Israeli occupation authorities expropriated more than one million dunums of land owned by Palestinian people in the occupied Galilee and Triangle area, in addition to other millions of dunums seized during the 1948 Nakba.
Nearly 1,700,000 Palestinians are now living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948, comprising about 21 per cent of the total population living in historic Palestine.
