This Land Sprouts Resistors: Land Day 2026 | Organized by Kaleem Hawa

Yawm al-Ard (Land Day) in Palestine was inaugurated to commemorate the events of 1976, during which mass Palestinian uprisings erupted against the Judaization of the Galilee and were brutally put down by Israeli settler and soldier groups. That this movement originated in the dakhil (the interior lands occupied during the Nakba) before extending across all of historic Palestine was significant, an assertion of the contiguity in land, continuity of thought, and a rejection of enforced quiescence under colonial control.

Land Day has been annually reconfirmed first and foremost through popular movement and armed resistance, part of a lineage of Palestinian thought and practice that spans early modernity, and includes the Buraq uprisings of 1929, the great peasant revolts of 1936–39, and that continues to the present day. Palestinians have resisted the alienation and theft of their land, as well as their people’s displacement and dismemberment from said land by the forces of British rule, Zionist settler colonialism, and Western imperialism. In this respect, land-based pedagogy is a core part of how Palestinian national culture reproduces itself, and reproduces resistance, with Palestinians canonizing Land Day through poetry (e.g., Darwish, al-Qasim, Ziyad), song, Islamic tractate, posters, film, and video. For the 2026 Land Day commemorations, join us as we invite writers and scholars to deliver reflections on different art, poetry, and texts about the land of Palestine and the struggle of its people. Speakers to be announced.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Poetry Project