Ramallah, 29-03-07: Palestinians will mark ‘Land Day’ tomorrow with a series of peaceful demonstrations in the West Bank against continuing land expropriation by the Israeli authorities through settlement expansion and the ongoing construction of the Apartheid Wall, both illegal under international law.
Non-violent protests will take place in the villages of Bil‘in (Ramallah District), Umm Salamuna (Bethlehem District) and Qaffin (Tulkarem District) on Friday 30 March, and in Salfit (Salfit District) and Izbat i-Tabib (Qalqiliya District) on Saturday 31 March.
In each of these areas, Palestinians will march together with Israeli and international supporters along the path of the Wall in protest at the thousands of acres of Palestinian land, much of it prime agricultural land and land that lies over key water resources, that has been expropriated in order to construct the Wall and expand Israeli settlements built on occupied land.
While Israel claims that the Wall is being built for ‘security‘ purposes, investigations have shown that it is a strategic land grab designed in order to allow for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, and to annex land containing key water resources.
Today, around 260,000 Israeli settlers live in 121 settlements and 102 ‘outposts‘ throughout the West Bank. Together with the 190,000 Israelis living in settlements in East Jerusalem, the total number of settlers reaches some 450,000.
Should construction of the Annexation Wall continue as planned, the major Israeli settlement blocs of Ma‘ale Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion will be annexed to Israel. Up to 58 percent of the Wall‘s total 703 kilometres have already been completed, resulting in massive land confiscation, de facto annexation, and the destruction of cultivated lands.
Its construction has already led to the requisition of approximately 35,000 dunums (3,500 hectares) of Palestinian land. The Wall‘s buffer zone in the northern West Bank seizes approximately 62,890 dunums (6,289 hectares) of West Bank land. Once the Wall is completed, it is projected that approximately 570,560 dunums (57,056 hectares) or nearly 10.1 percent of the West Bank and Jerusalem will lie between the Barrier and the Green Line. As such, 45.5 percent of the West Bank will be under Israeli control while the remaining 54.5 percent will be enclosed in a series of disjointed ghettos.
Background
Land Day commemorates the killing of 6 Palestinians in the Galilee on March 30, 1976 by Israeli troops during peaceful protests over the confiscation of Palestinian lands. Israeli authorities announced the confiscation of a total of 5,500 acres of land lying between the Palestinian villages of Sakhnin and Arrabe in the Galilee, and classified them as ‘closed military zones.‘ The expropriated lands later fell subject to heavy illegal settlement expansion.
The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture openly declared at the time that the primary purpose of the land confiscation policy was to alter the demographic nature of Galilee in order to create a Jewish majority in the area. The same policy continues today, primarily in the form of settlement construction and expansion and construction of the Apartheid Wall.
The confiscation of land led Palestinians within the 1948 borders to hold a general strike of repudiation, protesting the expropriation of their land.
Israeli army and police responded to the demonstrations with violence, killing 6 Palestinians in addition to injuring 96 others and arresting over 300.
Arab villages and towns were declared closed military zones by the Israeli authorities and a curfew was imposed on a number of them.
Thirty-one years later, Sakhnin is choking for lack of area in which to expand. Today, 22,000 people live in Sakhnin whose official municipal area is only 9,688 dunums. Next door to Sakhnin, the Regional Council of Misgav, a Jewish-Israeli community with 17,291 residents, has 183,000 dunums.
Photo: A Palestinian child walks next to a section made of concrete walls of Israel‘s controversial ‘separation barrier‘ in Abu Dis on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert‘s office on Wednesday said the government is looking into moving a stretch of its separation barrier deeper into the West Bank to include two Jewish settlements, a route that would leave thousands of Palestinians on the Israeli side of the fence. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)