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 have been killed by Israeli forces, and greater than 100 have 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 have been a part of Israeli state coverage to Judaise Galilee following the creation of the State of Israel.
Whereas the land confiscations affected your complete Galilee, the center of the 1976 protests was within the Palestinian cities of Sakhnin, Arrabeh and Deir Hanna.
The confiscated land is roughly the dimensions 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 today 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 around the globe on Monday to mark the fiftieth anniversary.
Is Israel nonetheless seizing land?
Sure, Israel has continued to grab massive swaths of Palestinian land, designating them as army zones, state land and different labels.
Most just lately, on February 8, 2026, Israel’s safety cupboard approved a sequence of sweeping measures to increase 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 underneath Palestinian management.
Rights teams and several countries 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.
In line with Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group, Israel accredited 12,349 housing items in 2023, 9,884 in 2024 and a document 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. Lots of the newly accredited settlements might be in densely populated Palestinian areas, additional limiting Palestinian motion and threatening the viability of a future Palestinian state.
On the similar 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 way of their property with impunity, backed by the army and the state.
The variety of settler assaults has risen sharply lately, with 852 recorded in 2022, 1,291 in 2023, 1,449 in 2024 and 1,828 in 2025 – a median 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, in line with 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 totally”, 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 important waterway that cuts by way of southern Lebanon, about 30km (19 miles) from the border with Israel.
Greater than one million Lebanese, or one in 5 folks, have been displaced from their houses, with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz saying he wouldn’t enable the return of individuals to the nation’s south till the security of Israelis is assured.
