Land Day in Palestine: In Solidarity
The articles of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, one of the two instruments implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, begin with the right to self-determination, which is considered to be the foundation of all human rights. Article 1 provides that “All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic cooperation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law.” The paragraph continues with a strict prohibition: “In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.”
In the same year that the Covenant came into force, Israeli police and army snipers assassinated six Palestinian youths protesting Israel’s confiscation of their people’s land and means of subsistence. The subject of the protests on that 30th day in March 1976 was some 5,000 acres of Palestinian Arab-owned land between the indigenous Galilee villages of Sakhnīn and Arrābe. However, the deprivation of Palestinians’ national lands is far greater, and continues. Accordingly, we commemorate this 37th Land Day and the many Palestinians who have fallen defending their homeland.
The first Land Day was a pivotal event in the struggle over land and in Arab citizens’ relationship to the Israeli state. It is especially significant as the first time since 1948 that Palestinians in Israel organized in a collective national response to Israeli policies of dispossession. Every year thereafter, Palestinians the world over have demonstrated that the people and its land are one.
Colonizers continue to deprive the people of their land across Palestine, as land struggles are replicated also in other regions. On this day, land grabbing and its resulting deprivation rage on in every continent, and remain defining issues of our times.
The inaugural issue of Land Times featured the continuing struggles from the Naqab, inside Israel, to indigenous peoples elsewhere. This issue updates those reports with developments across the Middle East/North Africa region and the globe.
As this Land Day ushers in another season of the Arab Spring, it also gives us pause to concentrate on the prominence of land struggles in our region, not least including the land as a subject of new policy formulation, institution building and constitutional reform. Some readers will mark this Land Day with peaceful actions to boycott, divest and sanction the institutions responsible for dispossessing Palestinians from their land and depriving them of their rights. Still others look forward to new commitments to equitable access to land and natural resources in the global processes and upcoming forums. This Land Day issue of Land Times encapsulates these with a focus on Palestine, a cause and rallying symbol of land struggles everywhere.
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