Every year on 30 March, Palestinians mark Yom al-Ard, Land Day. The phrase sounds almost harmless to those who have never lived inside its meaning, like a date for folklore, celebrating our roots, or perhaps honouring our sentimental attachment to olive trees and generationally inherited fields. But Land Day is not a charming ritual of heritage. It is a political wound. An annual acknowledgement of a truth that much of the world still tries to ignore, soften, or bury: In Palestine, our struggle has always been about the land. Simply, it is about our right to exist on our own land, and the violence that has been mobilised against us because of our refusal to disappear from it.
