Sidon marks Land Day with Arabic calligraphy contest

SIDON, Lebanon: Some 200 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian students participated in an Arabic calligraphy competition held in the southern city of Sidon Tuesday to mark the Palestinian “Land Day.”

Land Day is celebrated annually on March 30 and commemorates the day in 1976, when six Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded and jailed after clashing with Israeli forces during a protest over the Israeli government’s plan to expropriate 60,000 dunums of Arab-owned land in the Galilee.

Organized by Jinan University in Sidon in cooperation with the city’s school network and the French Cultural Center under the sponsorship of Sidon MP Bahia Hariri, the “Beautiful Arab Calligraphy” competition was designed to highlight Land Day as a pivotal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict and stress that the biggest part of Palestinian land is still under Israeli occupation.

The 200 students, who came from 20 public and private schools as well as from UNRWA schools in Sidon and its environs, competed in showing their talents in artistic drawings, decorative handwriting or lettering with a pen or brush.

Some students wrote poems and articles reflecting the Palestinians’ attachment to their land. Other students presented drawings that included Arabic texts in artistic print, in addition to those who displayed their skills in professional calligraphy.

The annual competition was attended by a representative of Hariri, Nabil Bawab, the general coordinator of the school network in Sidon and its environs; the director of the French Cultural Center in the city; a representative of Sidon Mayor Mohammad Saudi; and professors and teachers from Jinan University and other schools.

“Sidon, which carries a big treasure from the local civilized and distinctive society, has chosen Land Day on March 30 to send a message to the world that we cling to every grain of soil and every inch of our land from the north to the south until the last drop of blood in our bodies,” Bawab said in a speech at the event.

“We support our Palestinian brothers in their adherence to their land, which was seized from them by the Israeli occupation, and support the return to it no matter how long it takes. This is the message which we wanted to send to the entire world.”