Thread by @benabyad

As Israeli forces gun down Palestinian #GreatReturnMarch demonstrators in occupied Gaza, don't forget that today, 30 March, is #LandDay.

This is an annual event that the Israeli gov't & its apologists dearly hope you won't notice, or read up on.

So let me explain its origins.

After the State of Israel was established - & some 700-800,000 Palestinians expelled - approx. 95% of new Jewish communities built between 1948-1953 were established on the land of the denationalised Palestinian refugees. But the land colonisation process didn't end there...

The Palestinians who remained, & who became second-class Israeli citizens, were under a military regime until 1966. Military rule, plus Knesset legislation, enabled large-scale land expropriation to take place. Land was taken from Palestinians, to be used by Jewish Israelis.

On 30 March, 1976, Israeli police killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel during protests against the expropriation of Palestinian-owned land by the state.

'Land Day' became an annual event, focused on Israel's historic & ongoing settler colonial policies, & resistance to them

I say "ongoing" - & not just in the occupied West Bank, where Israel's illegal settlement enterprise is well-known.

This #LandDay, the residents of Umm al-Hiran - *citizens* of Israel - await imminent expulsion, so that a Jewish community can be built on ruins of their village.

So, you see, this is what the establishment of a 'Jewish state' has meant, and means, for Palestinians: expulsion, colonisation, discrimination.

#LandDay is thus a reminder of the roots of this so-called 'conflict', of the ongoing Nakba, & of the Palestinians' ongoing resistance