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مؤسسة لجان العمل الصحي
Health Work Committees
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Home » press release »   02th April 2017Print

In Commemoration of Land Day, Health Work Committees Calls for Support of the Palestinians steadfastness over their Land

 The Palestinian people commemorates the 41st anniversary of Land Day that was sparked from the Galilee to the Negev in 1976 as a rejection of the occupation government's confiscation of the Palestinian lands .General strike and marches were organized in Arab towns that ended with many martyrs and insured. Since that day, 30/3/1976, this date has become an annual date to remind us of the occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian people and their lands through confiscation of land for military and settlement purposes.

Today, after more than four decades, the facts on the ground show that the plundering of the Palestinian land and its resources continues, at an accelerated pace and under legal cover, following the enactment of the so-called Land Settlement Law, which allows occupation authorities to seize the land and deprive their owners.
In 2006, many studies revealed that the percentage of land expropriation in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem increased by more than 127%, accompanied by an increase of 57% in settlement activities in the year 2015, accompanied by the demolition of more than 1,000 Palestinian homes and the removal of entire Bedouin communities in the northern Jordan Valley, Um al Hiran in Negev and other threats in occupied East Jerusalem.
As for the water, the occupation controls 85% of the  water in Palestine, depriving the Palestinians to benefit only from about 14% of their water, which explains that the Palestinian citizen's share of water does not exceed a quarter of what an Israeli settler gets. Additionally, the wall that has been built 770 kilometers long, which has isolated many Palestinian villages and cities, dedicated the canton system and occupied the food and agriculture basket in Palestine, created difficult  daily reality for the Palestinians and foreshadows a disaster at all levels, including the right to movement, that added to the suffering of the population, especially women and patients who can no longer access to health services centers or the provision of nutritional needs.
Since October 2015, the occupation authorities have executed about 300 Palestinians in many areas, deprived many families of their bread winner and caused many social pains to bereaved families. This has escalated with arrests of thousands of Palestinian women, children and men.
Faced with these facts and statistics, and in the light of the fierce attack on the human and land in Palestine, and the Israeli control on more than 62% of the West Bank within the areas classified as "C", we, at Health Work Committees call on:
1- The International and local legal and media institutions to expose the practices of the occupation and refute its claims to justify the crimes against the Palestinian human and land under the pretext of security, and work to compel the occupying state under international conventions and treaties to stop looting Palestinian land and exploitation of its capabilities.
2- The Palestinian Authority, and civil and private institutions, to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian farmer on their land as a title for the steadfastness and survival, and activating the boycott of various occupation products and escalating and support the international campaigns to boycott the occupation entity.
3- Commemorating Land Day by symbolizing and reaffirming the right to return and protection of land, not only by annual celebrations and activities.
4- Demanding the United Nations, on this Land Day, to retract the decision of the Secretary General to withdraw the ESCWA report that proved that Israel practiced a racist apartheid system in the occupied Palestine, and end the policy of double standards and dealing with Israel as a state above the law.
5- The need to end the Palestinian political division, as it has pushed the damaging effects on the Palestinian citizen and has given the occupation the opportunity for confiscating our land and Judaize it.
6 - Intensify and encourage the expansion of urban and economic and agricultural investment in the Palestinian territories to preserve them from the settlement and confiscation of the Golan.
Lived the day of the immortal land ... our Palestinian man lived the address of our survival rooted in our homeland