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The Land Day Memorial Committee (LDMC) was created two years ago through the initiative of several Palestinian associations, with the intention to work together and be part of a unique movement to discuss the main problems of the Palestinians and to improve strategies to solve them. 

In February, the first meeting of this year took place, in order to organize the activities for the second year, especially in preparation for Land Day, which takes place on 30 March. 

MANIFESTO

Wake up Palestinians! 

Israel is continuing its policy of stealing our land from around us and out from under our feet, in order to expand the State of Israel and make it the size Palestine was before their arrival. The construction of the Apartheid Wall persists, despite the objections of the International Court of Justice. The situation is worsening every day as our population faces increasingly desperate conditions, with discrimination, poverty, and humiliation running rampant. Israel carries out massive violations of human rights against Palestinian civilians, without any respect for international law or the dignity of the Palestinian people. The Wall is transforming our villages and towns into large prisons, cutting Palestinian population centers from their land, dividing them, destroying any possibility of a future to develop, and isolating many between the Green Line and the Wall itself. 

Israel is creating more barriers on the ground in East Jerusalem, trying to change the demography of the city, through the municipality and the Interior Ministry, claming these measures are for security. Clearly, the goal is to make the Palestinians an increasing minority in Jerusalem, in order to consolidate Israeli control over the city and claim it fully as part of the Jewish state. This is one element in the Israeli strategy for creating a situation on the ground that no one opposes, with a total absence of any international power to stop it. 

Despite the assassinations, the arbitrary arrests, the house and shop demolitions, Israel is surprisingly able to present itself as the victim in this conflict, attracting support from the Western media and demanding more concessions from the Palestinian Authority. 

The US administration decided long ago to give Israel a hand in the process of globalization and made Israel its main economic and military partner in the Middle East. The strategic importance of its role in the region is one of the main reasons for the silence that surrounds the actions of Israel against the Palestinian population.

At this time, it is clear to us every day how the conditions of our population is getting worse and how the tragedy of Palestine is growing deeper. In Hebron alone, according to the Land Defense Committee statistics, in the year 2006 the amount of confiscated land included 2155 dunam, 1100 trees uprooted, 210 trees were burned and almost seven military orders were given in different places to prevent the people to cultivate their land. 19 houses and shops were completely destroyed, 7 walls belonging to Palestinian buildings were demolished, 25 construction of buildings were stopped, 34 demolition military orders were given and the army took more than 117 houses to transform them in military centers, occupying them for one or two days, or longer. In addition to these numbers, the Israeli military continues with the closure of shops, the preventing people from freely using their homes, the damaging of water pipes, and attacks against civilians, journalists, and peace activists. 

While Israel is continuing with this policies, the Palestinian political parties are now involved in internal clashes and arguments, something unfamiliar that is negatively affecting our capacity to concentrate on our national project. The risk is to lose our way, and in this context, the social movements and the civil society want to escape from this painful situation and to call a stop to the self-destructive system that this political situation is creating inside Palestinian society, in order to become more focused on our struggle for freedom. 

The Palestinians must demand the implementation of all the international resolutions concerning Palestine, such as the Right of Return, the Wall, the land, settlement, and the control of resources. Palestinians have to keep fighting for this and work seriously with the international community on this agenda by giving a very clear message: Israel must implement the resolutions exactly as they are! As the international community has built a system made by rules accepted by almost all the countries in the world, and a consequent system of punishment for those who don’t want to respect them, Palestine has to work more in the international arena and in the media and fight to demand that Israel be punished for violations of humanitarian and international law. The priority of our work must be through international connections and the rebuilding of the picture of Palestine in the international media as the real victim of the conflict. 

The Palestinian national unity government is the only way to open the discussion about the occupation and to give one clear message: in order to defend our democracy and make a strong culture for all our population, the occupation must end. Our struggle is a moral one, and it is guaranteed by the international resolutions about the right of Self-Determination. We must go ahead with our work on the international level, to give a clear message to the international community about what is going on in Palestine about the violation of human rights. In this way, a real change of the vision of Palestine from outside can happen. Israeli society is one of the most important targets, to which we have to look for new supporters in our struggle, in order to open our movement to all the possible supporters we can have. 

The Palestinian national unity government opened a space for more organizations to be part of this unique movement, to express the unity of our society that already exists. This can be the only way to effectively stop the Israeli policies against us, like the building and the extension of the settlements, the demolitions, and the Wall, and to move forward the recognition of our rights and our freedom.  

In the Land Day committee and during this time, the land remains the central point in our concern, and we have to make it the most important issue on the national agenda, and with it, our unity as a population and in our leadership. Our strategy now can be described as “More popular and democratic movements inside our national resistance movement.” 

The Schedule for the next month activities of the LDMC is the following:

03/29 Thursday – (Location: Dura) In the Martyrs Cultural Centre there will be a presentation of the Statement elaborated by the LDMC, with a discussion about Land Day and the struggle for land going on in the Hebron District. Following this, there will be a screening of the movie Aljahalin. The event will conclude with a Dabka dance show and Palestinian music.

03/30 Friday – (Location: Idna) Movie screening, speech and Dabka show.

04/02 Monday – (Location: Sa’eer) In the Municipality Hall, there will be a screening of a movie produced by the Alternative Information Center, titles A Hole in the Wall, followed by an open discussion about the movie. The event will finish with the Sheik Hussein Team, a Dabka group from Beit Sahour, with Palestinian music and songs. The event will conclude with an olive tree planting in the Hebron area.

04/04 Wednesday – (Location: Halhul) In the Forum Cultural Centre, there will be the screening of a film and a speech will take place afterwards.

Land Day Memorial Committee in Hebron disctrict-2007 is comprised of  several  associations: al-Anqa Cultural Association, The Alternative Information Center (AIC), Land Defence General Committee (LDGC),Palestinian Farmers Union (PFU), Land Research Centre (LRC), Palestinian Agricultural Relief (PAR), Union of Agricultural Workers Committee (UAWC), Wall Resistance Committee (WRC) and Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG).