Gaza City, Gaza Strip — Palestinians in Gaza are marking Land Day amid a dramatically altered reality, with more than half of the territory now under Israeli control and vast swathes of land rendered inaccessible due to the ongoing conflict. For many, the commemoration has shifted from a historical demand for the right of return to ancestral villages to a desperate plea to reclaim homes and lands lost during the recent war.
Uprooted from the Land
Sawsan al-Jadba, 54, sits with her children on a small patch of land in the Tuffah neighbourhood, just metres from the rest of her seized property. Before Israel’s 2023 war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, al-Jadba owned three plots of about 2,000 square metres each.
“They were a paradise,” she recalls. “I planted olive trees and citrus fruits … they were the source of livelihood for me and my children.”
Today, only about 600 square metres remain of al-Jadba’s land. She describes the loss as “a deep wound in her chest”, but remains determined to stay and cultivate her remaining plot despite limited resources.
“Land is like honour,” she says. “Even if only a single metre of my land remains, I will do the impossible to stay on it.”
Al-Jadba’s connection to the land is deeply personal, recalling past Land Day commemorations marking the events of March 30, 1976, when six unarmed Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during protests against land confiscation. Fifty years on, Land Day has become a foundational moment in Palestinian national consciousness.
“It was a day when we renewed our connection to lands occupied in 1967 and 1948, demanding our right to return,” al-Jadba says. “But today, the meaning has completely changed … now we are demanding the lands they took from us during this war, drawing new borders for us.”
Following a ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas in October 2025, al-Jadba returned to find her home destroyed and her land bulldozed. Despite losing two sons during the war and her husband in a previous conflict in 2008-2009, she has decided to continue farming as an act of survival and resistance.
“The only solution is to live and to hold on to my land,” she says, pointing to the crops she has planted. “Eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes … During Ramadan, we planted arugula, parsley and spinach. Gaza’s land is fertile; if you give to it, it gives back.”
The transformation of Gaza’s landscape is largely defined by the “yellow line,” stretching from north to south with a depth ranging from 2km to 7km. Beyond this line, areas designated by the Israeli army as “combat zones” are off-limits to Palestinians.
Estimates indicate that between 52 percent and 58 percent of Gaza’s land now falls under direct Israeli control.
Bashir Hamouda, 68, is currently displaced with his family in western Gaza after losing access to his agricultural land in Jabalia. “When I left my home and land … I wished the house would collapse on me so I could die inside it,” he says. “It felt like my heart was ripped out. Can a person live without a heart? I cannot live without land … the land is the heart.”
Hamouda attributes the shift in the meaning of Land Day to “international silence and inaction towards the Palestinians’ suffering.” He says, “Before, we demanded our historical right of return. Today, we are demanding to return to our homes in eastern Jabalia, just minutes away.”
This shift coincides with escalating land confiscation and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, along with ongoing forced displacement.
“We will not forget this land,” Hamouda says. “If we do not return, the generations after us will.”
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