Millions Across the Globe Mark Historic Day of Palestinian Struggle

“We are marching today because today is the day of the land,” said People’s Forum director Manolo De Los Santos, opening a 30,000-strong mobilization on Saturday, March 30, in New York City. “Palestinians were killed in 1976 defending their land. For those who think this all started on October 7, this is a reminder: this struggle is decades in the making!”

30,000 march for Palestine in New York City pic.twitter.com/1YTFr2ZSxg

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) March 30, 2024

Millions of people mobilized around the world on March 30 to mark Yawm al-Ard (Land Day). In the United States alone, where the government has provided unwavering support fo Israel including a steady stream of weapons as the Zionist state carries out genocide, actions took place in over 40 cities across the country. 

🇵🇸SCENES FROM LAND DAY: Mass demonstrations filled streets across the country to march with Palestine for land & liberation!

We’re at a critical moment in the fight for Gaza — & it’s clear the pressure of the movement is working. Our movement is not slowing down. We’ll continue… pic.twitter.com/NtTjESP9PO

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) April 1, 2024

Land has always been at the heart of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Today, the construction of illegal Israeli settlements continues to chip away at the land allegedly allocated for the Palestinian people. At least 700,000 Israelis live in illegal colonial settlements and outposts across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli officials have called for the creation of even more settlements amid the genocidal war, making clear the true nature of the zionist project to control all of Historic Palestine.

As Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary from Martinique and a participant in Algeria’s struggle against French colonialism, wrote, “for a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” Across the Global South, including the colonized and formerly colonized world, the struggle for land remains at the forefront.

As Pan Africanism Today’s Jonis Ghedi-Alasow writes in Peoples Dispatch, “The struggle for national liberation from colonialism, which the Palestinian people are today engaged in, must necessarily regain the land which the colonial project has unjustly expropriated…the anti-colonial aspirations of the Kenyan people continue to be traced to Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army—popularly known as the Mau-Mau. Similarly, the peasants of Tanzania have repeatedly reminded us that land is life. The ability to secure the social reproduction of our families and communities is at the heart of the struggle for freedom.”

In Brazil, the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) carried out actions in solidarity with Palestine, including in the Egídio Brunetto settlement, in the city of Juscimeita in Mato Grosso, where members of the movement planted trees in the “Free Palestine Forest.”

DIA DA TERRA PALESTINA!
Como parte das ações em solidariedade ao povo palestino, neste sábado (30) Dia da Terra Palestina, o assentamento Egídio Brunetto, em Juscimeita (MT) realizou o plantio de árvores na construção do Bosque Palestina Livre.
(1/2) pic.twitter.com/vnA4YPtEQj

— MST Oficial (@MST_Oficial) March 30, 2024

Ahead of March 30, João Pedro Stedile, of the national coordination of the MST, pointed out that Land Day is marked two days before the people of Brazil remember the start of the brutal US-backed military dictatorship, on April 1, 1964. Stedile calls Land Day “a celebration of the right of people to have their territory, their land, their space.” To Stedile, “this has everything to do with our fight for agrarian reform, for the sovereignty of our territories, of our settlements.”

🇵🇸 Em solidariedade ao Povo Palestino, mural foi pintado no acampamento "Herdeiros da Luta de Porecatu", na região norte do Paraná, em março deste ano. No acampamento também foi gravado o videoclipe da Unidos da Lona Preta, onde a bateria toca em frente à arte.

1-2 pic.twitter.com/pHiZ1yp3Gg

— MST Oficial (@MST_Oficial) April 1, 2024

In Ramallah, Palestine, a demonstration took place on land day, with protesters holding up the banners of various Palestinian resistance factions, as well as images of Palestinian martyrs and political prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti. A sign from the protest read, “”Don’t forget how you felt when you woke up on October 7, and your phone was filled with messages saying, ‘Wake up and see!’ All the blood and massacres are happening to make us forget that this enemy was defeated in a moment. Your defense of the resistance and its effectiveness is what will make the blood of the martyrs victorious. This is a debt upon you: do not forget, do not be defeated! On Land Day, glory to the resistance on this land.”

Demonstrators in the streets of Ramallah on Land Day

In Jordan, Land Day marked the seventh day of protests outside the Israeli embassy in Amman. Security forces made dozens of arrests of protesters. Jordanians, many of whom are descendants of Palestinian refugees, have been rising up in protest for days following the UN Security Council’s long-awaited approval of a ceasefire resolution. The protesters are demanding that this resolution be enforced.