Yearly on March 30, Palestinians observe Land Day, or Yom al-Ard, recalling the occasions of fifty years in the past when on March 30, 1976, six unarmed Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces, and greater than 100 had been injured throughout protests in opposition to Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land.
Israel ordered the confiscation of two,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of land belonging to Palestinian residents of Israel within the Galilee. These plans had been a part of Israeli state coverage to Judaise Galilee following the creation of the State of Israel.
Whereas the land confiscations affected the whole Galilee, the center of the 1976 protests was within the Palestinian cities of Sakhnin, Arrabeh and Deir Hanna.
The confiscated land is roughly the scale of three,000 soccer pitches or the world from the southern tip of Manhattan to the beginning of Central Park in New York, United States.
What do Palestinians do on Land Day?
Palestinians, each in Israel and throughout the occupied Palestinian territory — the Gaza Strip and the West Financial institution, together with East Jerusalem — mark this present day by holding protests and vigils and planting olive timber to reaffirm their connection to the land. The protests are sometimes met with brutal use of power by Israel.
Protest marches are additionally deliberate in cities all over the world on Monday to mark the fiftieth anniversary.
Is Israel nonetheless seizing land?
Sure, Israel has continued to grab giant swaths of Palestinian land, designating them as army zones, state land and different labels.
Most not too long ago, on February 8, 2026, Israel’s safety cupboard accredited a sequence of sweeping measures to develop its powers throughout the occupied West Financial institution, together with easing the sale of Palestinian land to Israeli settlers and increasing the powers of Israeli authorities in areas beneath Palestinian management.
Rights teams and a number of nations condemned Israel’s land seize, calling it “de facto annexation” and a “deliberate and direct assault” on the viability of a Palestinian state.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has ramped up each formal settlement approvals and casual outpost institutions.
Based on Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group, Israel accredited 12,349 housing items in 2023, 9,884 in 2024 and a file 27,941 in 2025.
In December, Israel’s safety cupboard accredited plans to formalise 19 unlawful settlements throughout the occupied West Financial institution. Israeli settlements are Jewish communities constructed illegally on Palestinian land. Most of the newly accredited settlements can be in densely populated Palestinian areas, additional limiting Palestinian motion and threatening the viability of a future Palestinian state.
On the identical time, Israeli military raids, home demolitions and arrests within the occupied territory are at unprecedented ranges, whereas settlers assault and kill Palestinians and rampage by their property with impunity, backed by the army and the state.
The variety of settler assaults has risen sharply in recent times, with 852 recorded in 2022, 1,291 in 2023, 1,449 in 2024 and 1,828 in 2025 – a mean of 5 assaults per day.
A minimum of 1,094 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers within the West Financial institution since October 2023, based on the most recent United Nations figures.
Smotrich urges Israel to annex southern Lebanon
On March 23, Israel’s far-right minister of finance and head of the settlement administration, Bezalel Smotrich, known as for annexation of southern Lebanon, saying its bombardment “wants to finish with a distinct actuality completely”, which features a “change of Israel’s borders”.
“I say right here definitively … in each room and in each dialogue, too: The brand new Israeli border have to be the Litani,” he stated, referring to the Litani River, a essential waterway that cuts by southern Lebanon, about 30km (19 miles) from the border with Israel.
Greater than 1,000,000 Lebanese, or one in 5 individuals, have been displaced from their properties, with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz saying he wouldn’t enable the return of individuals to the nation’s south till the protection of Israelis is assured.
