New York, NY, March 29, 2008 – Saturday’s Land Day protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire and settlement mogul Lev Leviev highlights the sixty-year Israeli campaign to displace Palestinians from their land, and Palestinian defiance and resistance – from the Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when around 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their villages by Israeli forces to become refugees; to the original Land Day protests in 1976; to present day settlement construction by Israeli settlement builders like Lev Leviev in Bil’in, Jayyous, Jabal Abu Ghneim and Maale Adumim.

 

The first Land Day protests were held on March 30, 1976. Israel’s Ministry of Finance confiscated 5000 acres of Palestinian land between the Palestinian villages of Sakhnin and Arraba in the Galilee in northern Israel. Construction of eight Jewish industrial villages was planned on the seized land. On March 30, 1976, Palestinian towns from the Negev to the Galilee launched a day of nonviolent protests and strikes in solidarity with Sakhnin and Arraba. Six Palestinian civilians were killed and over 100 Palestinians injured by the Israeli military and police as they violently repressed the protests. Palestinians have held Land Day protests every year since 1976, on and around March 30^th.

 

Lev Leviev’s company Africa-Israel, which he purchased in 1996, has been directly involved in the long history of Jewish settlement and displacement of the indigenous Palestinian people. A 2004 Africa-Israel report notes that the company was established in 1934 as Africa Palestine Investments Ltd. "by a group of Jewish investors from South Africa, with the purpose of engaging in acquisition and development of real estate for Jewish settlement in Israel." Its name was changed to Africa-Israel in 1967, the year that Israel took control of and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip.   

 

60 years after the Nakbah, and 32 years after the original Land Day, Israeli land seizure and repression continue in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and inside Israel, as does Palestinian resistance. The testimonies below – from refugees from the Nakbah in 1948, from Land Day protests in 1976 and from present day Bil’in and Jayyous where Leviev’s companies are building settlements – demonstrate the continuity of both Israeli repression and Palestinian steadfastness and resistance that Palestinian communities in Israel, in the Occupied Territories and living in exile as refugees around the world are commemorating at protests this Land Day.

 

Responding to the failure of the international community to act to stop Israel’s ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people, the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society organizations for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel (www.bds–palestine.net/) has resulted in a growing international BDS movement. For more on the the Land Day protest in New York City and the boycott of settlement builders Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen see: www.adalah.ny.org

 

 

NakbAH: 1948

 

Hafiza Abdullah (Kanon/ Tulkarem district):  The people of my village were only simple farmers and did not have any weapons when we were driven out during the wheat and watermelon picking season of 1948.

 

Abdul Qader Al-Ha (Qaqon village, Tulkarem):  Our village had fertile land and we had a field next to it; The Mediterranean Sea was just eight kilometres away. 

 

Abu Khader Hamdan (Salameh, Yaffa District):  I lived and worked in my home village, Salameh, which was less than six kilometers from Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is a relatively new city, it was built on Palestinian land called Tel Al-Rabe, and it was part of Yaffa city. 

 

Om Issa Abu Sereyyeh (Shekh Emwanes, Yafa District):  We owned a 100-dunum farm, which we planted with wheat and other cereals and vegetables, but we were forced to leave it without harvesting our crops.

 

Abu Khader Hamdan:  It was during the orange season and we had managed to harvest our oranges for a month before we were deported.

 

Om Issa Abu Sereyyeh

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