introduction11 With efforts to stop the general strike and the ongoing protests through pressure and the offering of financial and political incentives proving fruitless, the Israeli government began deploying army units, police officers and border guards inside and around Arab localities and social centres.17 The result of this severe police repression was the death of six Palestinian citizens, along with around one hundred injured and many more arrested. Serving as a stark reminder of the continued confiscation of their land and collective struggles against ongoing Judaization campaigns,18 March 30 has since been commemorated as Land Day by Palestinians everywhere – ­citizens, refugees, those living under occupation and those living as refugees abroad. In the early 1980s, and especially with the wave of demonstrations that erupted in October 1982 in response to the massacres conducted in the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, political organizing and awareness increased among Arab citizens. Developing out of the National Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, the High Follow-Up Committee was formed by Arab Members of Knesset (MKs), local government figures, union heads, and leaders from civil society organizations. This Committee organized political actions including protests against the Israeli invasion, and called for a series of general strikes on national 17 Notably, none of the official documents of the Israeli Ministry of Defence deemed the general strike and associated events as ‘actions of warfare’ that would have otherwise officially merited the extreme reaction by the Israeli security forces. For more on the events and significance of Land Day, see Beinin (1989, 205–216). 18 The Zionist policy of Judaization (or tahweed in Arabic) refers to the systematic domination of Jewish populations and the formation of clear Jewish demographic majorities in Mandate Palestine, through the process of ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the indigenous Arab population. A secret 1976 memorandum submitted to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other government officials recommended changes in Israeli policy toward Palestinian-Arabs in Israel and outlined a detailed plan for the Judaization of the Galilee. Written by Israel Koenig, the Northern District (Galilee) Commissioner of the Ministry of Interior at the time, the Koenig Report aimed to meet “long-term Jewish national interests” with measures of demographic engineering and control. Among other suggestions, the Koenig Report recommended the restriction of Arab employment and education, reduction of their access to social services, and asserted the need for an expansion of Jewish settlements in the interest of “diluting existing Arab population concentrations.” In a joint publication, the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights observe that “[a]lthough the Government has never acknowledged that its official policies were guided by this plan, many of the recommendations of the Koenig Plan were in fact implemented, especially those to expand land expropriations from Arab owners and establish new Jewish settlements in the area in order to fragment and contain the Palestinian population. Successive plans for the ‘development’ of the Galilee clearly reflected Koenig’s recommendations ….” See Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine, May 2005, http://www.badil.org/en/documents/category/35-publications?download=102%3Aruling -palestine. For a reprint of the original report, see Koenig (1976, 190–200).