In his daily column in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, Ahmad Dahbour asks if it is not high time the Arab nation changes the title ‘Palestinian Land Day’ to ‘Arab Land Day.’
He states, “[This year] Land Day is marked not only on the Palestinian calendar, but also on the Iraqi one. Palestine and Iraq are but a united slogan. An umbilical cord with the Palestinian nation on the one side, and the Iraqi nation on the other, connects the Arab nation which is covered in cuts and bruises.”
Land Day, which has been marked every year on March 30th since 1976, is a general strike day of the Israeli-Arab sector* [see note at end of item]. In 1976, in retaliation for the intentions of the Israeli government to expropriate agricultural lands belonging to residents of villages in western Galilee, residents of the villages held protest demonstrations. In reaction to burning tires and throwing stones, shots were fired at the demonstrators, killing six of them. Land Day marks the protest of the Arab residents of Israel towards the ongoing policy of discrimination and expropriation of lands.
The Israeli-Arab Surveillance Committee decided this year to mark Land Day as a day of protest against the assault on Iraq, the demolition of Israeli-Arab homes and against what the Surveillance Committee defines as “the continuing Israeli assault upon the Palestinian nation in the territories.”
Since the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the link between the Palestinian and Iraqi nations has been accentuated. On the one hand there are pro-Iraqi demonstrations in Palestinian cities, and on the other hand Saddam Hussein stresses the common fate of the two nations in his speeches, while his regime sends money to Palestinian families whose sons were involved in fighting Israel.
Dahbour expresses this tendency when he writes, “We have never been so aware of the Palestinian suffering as we are today, because today we direct all our pain and suffering to the mighty Iraq.”
Dahbour sees in Iraq the defender of the whole of the Arab nation, and a country which is now paying for its loyalty to the Palestinians. He mentions the Iraqi assistance to the Palestinians during the 1948 war. He states that Iraq and its army remained heroes, as they were in 1948, when they were not defeated even once in their fight.
Similar to the Israeli-Arab Surveillance Committee, Dahbour also takes the opportunity of Land Day to protest against the war in Iraq. He stresses, “We feel that Land Day is written in the calendars of both
nations. When will the Arab Nation [understand that it should] make it ‘Arab Land Day’?”
*Note: The term “Israeli-Arabs” refers to those Arabs, or Palestinians, living within pre-1967 Israel, as opposed to those living in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.