Statement issued by land Research Center on the forty-fifth anniversary of the eternal Land Day

One of The Babylon King Hammurabi code of Laws (1739-1750 BC) states: “The field, garden, and house of a chieftain, of a man, or of one subject to quit-rent, cannot be sold.”. Undoubtedly, Hammurabi’s code of Laws valued the land and the residence as basic human rights, and considered them unsellable.

Modern Colonialism, strikingly the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian lands, turned Lands and Houses into real estate that can be manipulated, not only to deprive the Palestinian indigenous people from their sovereignty and right to use their land and but to also replace them with Zionist colonists brought from various parts of the earth with colonialist expansionist agendas, ignoring all Humanitarian conventions, Humanitarian Laws , International legitimacy, and United Nations resolutions.

Since the beginning of history, various people and nations resided the earth, but Palestinians are the only people who cherish this occasion as a holy reminder of steadfastness and resilience on the land no matter how long the Occupation remains.

The Israeli Occupation demolished more than 170 thousand Palestinian houses, confiscated more than 2.1 million hectares out of a country with a total area of only 2.7 million hectares. The Occupation nevertheless forcedly displaced 65% of the Palestinian people who are still holding very strong to their historical right to their land and home. This same arbitrary Occupation demolished the Bedouin village of Al-‘Araqeeb in Negev for the 184 times, and people of Al-‘Araqeeb are building it restlessly for the 185 time. The Israeli Occupation manifested its racism through constructing a 700 km wall[1] to lock up Palestinians in the 1967 occupied land, and set up 880 internal roadblocks to restrict their movement, then established about 538 illegal colonies and outposts to dominate more space from the indigenous land.

In the forty-fifth anniversary of land day, while Palestinians are quarantined to avoid contracting an infection of the COVID 19 virus, the occupation bulldozers demolish more houses and structures whilst the Occupation’s arms are working nonstop to find a way to register Palestinian lands in the names of strangers, and forgetting that the Palestinian land symbolizes the honor and the soul , and its soil is blessed by martyrs.

In this memorable day, and while Palestinians are busy with the upcoming parliamentary elections, the Occupation seized all opportunities to demolish Palestinian houses, and to build illegal colonies for migrant colonists. Thus, Palestinians should keep an attentive eye on land while following up on the elections. Indeed, no government, parliament, or a state will ever be if Palestinians lost their land.

On the Occasion of land day, we salute martyrs of the land, and prisoners of struggle for freedom, as we remind the oppressor that a people {Palestinians} -that considers Babylonians and Canaanites as ancestors; “children of Intifada” as grandsons; windflower, thyme, and daisy as every day fragrance- will be the one who laughs last and longest.

Land Research Center / Arab Studies Society

March 30^th 2021

Jerusalem- Palestine

[1] The Annexation and Expansion wall , built to segregate Palestinian lands and isolate its residents , the wall is 781, 431 meter long, Israelis claim that the wall was a must for security reasons.