PALESTINIAN LAND DAY -- Freedom Palestine. Land Day - March 30; Help Palestine. Freedom Palestine. Land Day March 30; Palestine needs your love. Freedom Palestine. Land Day. March 30. [No place, no date, but 1980s].

Rare collection of posters displaying Palestinian solidarity against Israel expropriation of land.

RARE POSTERS PROTESTING AGAINST CONFISCATION OF LAND IN GALILEE. In 1976, the Israeli government decided to expropriate lands in the Galilee for official use. The plan seems to have been a mixture of industrial development, creation of new Jewish settlements, and new military training facilities. Some 20,000 dunams of land were to be expropriated, 30% of which were to be expropriated from Arabs, 15% from Jews, with the remainder constituting state-owned land.

Tawfiq Ziad, the mayor of Nazareth, led the Arab response, calling for a day of general strikes and protests against the confiscation of land. However, Arab politicians were split on the issue, and on 18 March, some of the heads of the local Arab councils, members of the Labour Party, voted against supporting the day of action. Civil unrest followed this vote, with the Israeli government declaring all demonstrations illegal. This had negligible effect, and a wave of strikes and marches took place throughout the Arab towns in Israel.

At 5pm on 29 March 1976, the Israeli government enforced a curfew on six Arab villages in the Galilee, and mobilised some 4,000 police, backed up by a helicopter unit and army reinforcements, with the operation to seize the land scheduled for the following day. The ignition point of the violent protests that followed has been disputed, but during the protests, four unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and two more by police.

These actions helped create a new Palestinian Arab solidarity, and Land Day events centred on March 30th became a focal point of Arab anger against Israel.

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