On the tunes of Bedouin traditional songs the horses began to knock on the dusty ground with their hooves announcing the start of the celebration organized by al-Tarabin tribe near the Israeli military site Kissufim on the eastern borders of al-Qarara area to the northeast of Khan Younis province in the southern Gaza Strip.
Under the watchful eye of the Israeli army soldiers the ceremony kicked off with horse and camel shows in front of large crowds of citizens who flocked to the place of the celebration in an atmosphere of joy and pleasure delivering a message of challenge and pride about their attachment to their land.
The scene of the elders and sheikhs sitting in Bedouin hair houses and surrounded by swords and daggers along with the smell of the Arabic coffee in the place was remarkable.
Poems asserting the Arab identity of the Palestinian land were read children were adorned with traditional clothes and a Palestinian flag was raised on a long mast in the heart of the field.
Mohammed Abu Sitta 30 a horseman told the PIC reporter that participating in the ceremony means a lot to him especially that he was told by his grandparents and father to defend the land.
Khalid al-Amour the spokesman of al-Tarabin youth group told the PIC reporter that this event comes to mark Land Day which is celebrated by the Palestinian people in recall of the tragedy that afflicted the Palestinians of Galilee and the Triangle area in the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories.
Amour called on the Palestinian factions to end the division and unite since it is the only way to liberate the Palestinian land and holy sites.
The PIC reporter was taken by the scene of a man in his seventies called Abu Saad al-Sufi who kept staring at the borderline and the lands lying behind it remembering his family’s usurped lands which are located in Beersheba that is not far from the Gaza borders.
As soon as the sunset approached elders young men and children stood in one line to perform the Dihhyya and Marbouaa (Palestinian Bedouin dances) announcing the end of the ceremony but not the dream of return.
On Thursday 30th March 2017 Palestinians marked the 41st anniversary of Land Day commemorating the uprising that was launched inside the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories protesting the confiscation of their lands and the policy of Judaization pursued by Israel.
