Chicago (March 30, 2004)- Twenty- eight years ago today, on March 30th 1976, in responce to zionist occupation forces illegally confiscating a total of 5,500 acres of Palestinian land from Palestinian villages in the Galilee, in northern Palestine, the Palestinian people rose up in protest. The zionists classified these lands as so called "closed military zones" and later they fell subject to heavy illegal settlement expansion. As a result of this outright theft of Palestinian land, there were heavy confrontations between Palestinian-Israeli citizens and zionist regime military forces. The end result was the brutal murder of 6 Palestinians, with another 96 injured and about 300 arrests. This date has become a symbol for all Palestinians of the struggle for their land.

Today the Palestinian people commemorate the events which took place 28 years ago, and are reminded daily of the fact that the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land continues unabated through land confiscations, the establishment of illegal colonies on Palestinian land, and the annexation of their land via this racist apartheid wall. In fact, since 1948 the zionist regime has expropriated more than 17 million dunums (17,000 sq. km) of land owned by Palestinian refugees, nearly 1 million dunums owned by Palestinians inside 1948 Palestine, and has further expropriated and/or controls some 4.7 million dunums in the 1967 occupied West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and this racist wall will make these figures even higher (see www.stopthewall.org). But no matter how much theft has been committed by the zionist occupiers its insatiable appetite for Palestinian land is never satisfied, and they will not be satisfied until they see the complete removal of the indigeneous Palestinian people from their ancestral homelands to make room for a pure Jewish only state devoid of any Palestinian presence.

The zionist regime continues to commit daily crimes with impunity against the Palestinian people and the whole world is seemingly oblivious to this reality. (please see: www.palestinemonitor.org/factsheet/Palestinian_intifada_fact_sheet.htm) But we affirm that peace in the Middle East will continue to be illusive as long as the Palestinian people are unable to exercise their right to return to their homes and lands from which they were forcibly expelled and made into refugees, and until the zionist occupation regime is held accountable to its obligations and responsibilities under existing international law.

In the meantime, the Palestinian people will exercise their right to resist occupation, colonization and oppression until that which is legally and rightfully theirs is returned to them. No justice, no peace.

www.iap.org/landday.htm