Press Releases

37 years ago Israeli police and military killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel demonstrating against thousands of confiscated dunums for Jewish-Israeli colonies in the Galilee.

Annual commemoration of March 30^th as Land Day reaffirms the unity of the Palestinian people whether in Shatat (exile), in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, or as sub-citizens in the colonizer state of Israel.

Palestinians are unified by their cultural and physical rootedness to their land. In jarring contradiction, Palestinians are categorically denied their individual and collective rights within that homeland. The State of Israel has maintained a policy of forcible transferring Palestinians from their homeland, a continuous process of creating refugees and internally displaced people: what BADIL refers to as the Ongoing Nakba.

Integral to consolidating its control, occupation and colonization, Israel strives to limit the population of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line by violating international law including human rights. Israel does so with more than 50 discriminatory laws in Israel-proper, the ‘matrix of control’ composed of permits, checkpoints, demolitions, and denial of access to natural resources in the West Bank, and unrestrained attacks on Gaza as in November 2012.

The 37^th anniversary of Land Day is an occasion for renewing the call to confront violent policies of racial-based exclusion. Challenging the concerted effort to segregate and isolate Palestinians requires non-compliance with the permit system and other illegitimate administrative regulations imposed on Palestinians. The challenge also requires developing Palestinian life in threatened areas. To reconstitute Palestinian resistance, we support:

1. Rejecting the status quo in occupied land through cultivation and use, particularly areas under direct threat;
2. Reviving volunteerism so as to promote resilience through collective action and reducing dependence on international aid;
3. Demanding that Palestinian institutions produce structural plans and provide public funding for developing use of Area C in the West Bank and the Buffer Zone in the Gaza Strip;
4. Encouraging the Palestinian private sector to invest in agricultural and urban projects, including sports and entertainment, in order to strengthen the feasibility of Palestinian life in threatened areas.