Riham Darwish takes the opportunity of Land Day to explain why land is so important to the Palestinian people: “The 30th of March is the annual reminder of identity for generations of Palestinians, ones who still hold very dear the names of the hometowns they never visited, and may never visit.”
On March 30th, the village of Al Walaja welcomed Palestinians from from surrounding areas to mark Land Day by planting olive trees. The village has lost most of its lands since 1948, in successive waves of Israeli confiscations and land grabs. Ali Khalil Al-Araj, a resident from Al Walaja, 50, said, “I am here because this is our land. We will stay here and we will defend it. My family just with the settlement and the road, we lost 50 dunums. But we will stay and die here.”