For 48 years, Land Day has been commemorated on 30 March annually to reaffirm the Palestinian people’s unity as the national people of Mandatory Palestine and the ongoing struggle and resistance in pursuit of liberation, self-determination and return. With colonial states’ ongoing complicity, the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of 76 years of forced displacement and transfer, colonization and apartheid designed “to acquire the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians” to perpetuate the Ongoing Nakba.
Due to the failure of the international community to fulfill its obligations, the Palestinian people have experienced multiple waves of forced displacement, transfer and land dispossession. During the British Mandate (1922-1947), more than 100,000 Palestinians were displaced, in support of and preparation for Zionist colonization. During the Nakba (1947-1949), Israel was created on 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine, after the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians. This was made possible by the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 which recommended the illegal partition of Mandatory Palestine and granted the colonial Zionist movement 56 percent of the land. In 1967, when Israel occupied the rest of Palestine, another 400,000 to 450,000 Palestinians were displaced, some for the second time.
Since 1948, the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime has gradually established and fortified its three main pillars: Palestinian displacement and transfer, colonization and apartheid. The ongoing Nakba is perpetrated by Israeli legislations, policies and practices such as land confiscation and denial of use, denial of access to natural resources and services, denial of residency, segregation, fragmentation and isolation, discriminatory zoning and planning, the permit regime, suppression of resistance and the denial of reparations.
In the last 30 years, the Oslo Accords and the so-called peace process have only served to further entrench and legitimize Israel’s system of colonial domination and oppression. It has also served as an example of the international community’s failure to ensure the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and return.
With its ongoing use of force and creation of an unbearable coercive environment, Israel has forcibly displaced over 66 percent of the Palestinian people and controls over 85 percent of Mandatory Palestine.
The global solidarity movement and advocates for Palestine have played an essential role in countering and challenging Israel’s impunity and colonial states’ complicity. Through their sustained and strategic efforts, combined with Palestinian resistance, is how we will end the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, dismantle Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime and hold colonial states accountable for their complicity.
As the Palestinian people commemorate Land Day during the Israeli genocide, BADIL calls on:
- The Global Solidarity Movement to take strategic and effective direct actions that imposes a material effect on governments to end their involvement in the genocide.
- Third States to fulfill their obligations and take practical measures to immediately end Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, and 76 years of its colonial-apartheid regime through arms embargoes and military, economic and diplomatic sanctions.
- The United Nations to take every available measure under international law to hold Israel accountable before international binding mechanisms.
29 March 2024
Source: badil.org