Statement by ARDD
On 30 March, Palestinians everywhere commemorate Land Day: a defining moment in the history of Palestinian struggle, collective resistance, and attachment to the land. Land Day marks the events of 1976, when Palestinians inside historic Palestine rose against Israeli plans to confiscate thousands of dunums of Palestinian land in the Galilee. The protests, met with deadly force, resulted in the killing of six Palestinians, the injury of hundreds, and the arrest of many others. Since then, Land Day has become far more than an anniversary. It is a symbol of steadfastness, rootedness, and the enduring Palestinian refusal to be separated from the land.
This year, again, Palestinians commemorate Land Day under especially devastating circumstances. In Gaza, Israel’s ongoing genocide has produced unprecedented destruction, mass killing, and starvation. Agricultural land has been destroyed, and water systems, electricity networks, schools, hospitals, and shelters have been systematically attacked. The destruction of land and the means of life is not incidental; it is central to a broader process of displacement and erasure.
At the same time, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians face escalating land confiscation, settlement expansion, settler violence, home demolitions, and forced displacement. Palestinian communities in villages, refugee camps, and cities are increasingly subjected to military raids, closures, arbitrary restrictions on movement, and attacks aimed at making life unlivable. Families are being forced from their homes in areas across the Jordan Valley, Masafer Yatta, Jerusalem, and elsewhere. Refugee camps in the northern West Bank, including Jenin and Tulkarm, have witnessed repeated incursions, destruction of infrastructure, and growing efforts to fragment and displace communities, with more than 60000 people being forced to leave their houses and villages.
Control over land has always been inseparable from control over natural resources, particularly water. For decades, Israel has maintained a system of unequal access to water resources that privileges settlements while restricting Palestinian communities. These dynamics are part of a broader regional reality in which control over land, water, energy, and movement has become central to political power and inequality, and it is at the basis of the current war and land invasion in Lebanon. At a time when the wider region faces growing pressures related to climate change, environmental degradation, and resource scarcity, the systematic control of water and land resources as a systematic colonial practice imposed on Palestinians and throughout the whole region further deepens vulnerability and injustice.
Land Day reminds us that the struggle over Palestine is not only about borders or territory. It is also about dignity, rights, resources, memory, and the ability of a people to remain on their land and shape their future. It is about opposing policies of annexation, fragmentation, dispossession, and forced transfer. It is about affirming that Palestinian life, presence, and belonging cannot be erased.
Today, as Palestinians continue to endure genocide in Gaza, intensified annexation and displacement in the West Bank, and ongoing violations of their most basic rights, Land Day stands as a reminder of both the scale of injustice and the enduring strength of Palestinian resilience.
ARDD reaffirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people everywhere, and calls for urgent international action to end the assault on Gaza, halt settlement expansion and forced displacement in the West Bank, protect Palestinian rights, and uphold the fundamental principles of justice, dignity, and self-determination.
Palestinian attachment to the land has survived decades of occupation, colonization, and displacement. It remains unbroken. On this Land Day, we honor the sacrifices of those who came before, stand with those resilient today, and affirm that the Palestinian struggle for land, rights, and freedom continues.
