Land Day - Background

Background

See also: Arab–Israeli conflict and Israeli–Palestinian conflict

The Arabs of Palestine were a largely agrarian people, 75% of whom made their living off the land before the establishment of the Israeli state. After the Palestinian exodus and the effects of the 1948 Arab-Israel war, land continued to play an important role in the lives of the 156,000 Palestinian Arabs who remained inside what became the state of Israel, serving as the source of communal identity, honor, and purpose.

The Israeli government adopted in 1950 the Law of Return to facilitate Jewish immigration to Israel and the absorption of Jewish refugees. Israel's Absentees' Property Law of March 1950 transferred the property rights of absentee owners to a government-appointed Custodian of Absentee Property, effectively legalizing the confiscation of lands belonging to the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel in 1948. It was also used to confiscate the lands of Arab citizens of Israel who "are present inside the state, yet classified in law as 'absent'." The number of "present-absentees" or internally displaced Palestinians from among the 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel is estimated (in 2001) to be 200,000, or some 20% of the total Palestinian Arab population in Israel. Salman Abu-Sitta estimates that between 1948 and 2003 more than 1,000 square kilometers (390 sq mi) of land was expropriated from Arab citizens of Israel (present-absentees and otherwise).

According to Oren Yiftachel, public protest against state policies and practices from among the Palestinian Arabs in Israel was rare prior to the mid-1970s, owing to a combination of factors including military rule over their localities, poverty, isolation, fragmentation, and their periphal position in the new Israeli state. Those protests that did take place against land expropriations and the restrictions Arab citizens were subject to under military rule (1948-1966) are described by Shany Payes as "sporadic" and "limited", due to restrictions on rights to freedom of movement, expression and assembly characteristic of that period. While the political movement Al-Ard ("The Land") was active for about a decade, it was declared illegal in 1964, and the most notable antigovernment occasions otherwise were the May Day protests staged annually by the Communist party.