The struggle to reclaim or protect land is fundamentally a struggle to restore human dignity. Photo: Lucky Nxumalo/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty Images
Eid al-Fitr is a celebration of spiritual triumph and communal togetherness — a day when fasting gives way to feasting, charity and gratitude. In the Gaza Strip, during Eid al-Fitr this year, Palestinians gathered for prayers besides bombed-out schools and homes. Yet Eid’s ethos of reflection and faith endured. The greeting “Eid Mubarak” (Blessed Eid) was exchanged with quiet resolve — a reminder that even amid displacement, dignity persists.
This juxtaposition provides a conceptual anchor for exploring two intimately connected ideals: land and dignity. Using Eid as our lens, we delve into the struggles of those deprived of their land and dignity from South Africa’s land reform debates to Brazil’s agrarian struggles and indigenous resistance in the settler states of North America, Australia and New Zealand.
The loss of land — whether through colonisation, apartheid, displacement or economic dispossession — not only inflicts material hardship but also undermines identity and self-worth. Conversely, the struggle to reclaim or protect land is fundamentally a struggle to restore human dignity.
Palestine
For Palestinians, the connection between land and dignity is visceral and historically entrenched. In 1948, as the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Palestinians experienced al-Nakba (the Catastrophe): more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in the wake of violence, with more than 400 villages destroyed. As historian Ilan Pappé has documented, this was a deliberate plan — Plan Dalet — to create an “Arab-free Palestine”. Palestinian scholar Fayez Sayegh drew a parallel between these actions and other ethnic cleansings. The Palestinian people were deprived of both land and dignity — a dual assault that persists as an “unfinished present action”.
Patrick Wolfe argues that “invasion is a structure not an event” and that the logic of elimination — driven by access to territory — remains active long after initial conquests. In Palestine, this process continued beyond 1948 through military rule, land seizures after the 1967 occupation, and the ever-expanding network of settlements and separation walls. The Nakba is not history; it is an ongoing reality that Palestinians contest daily by holding onto the remnants of their homes and traditions.
Edward Said framed the Palestinian struggle in moral and human terms in The Question of Palestine. Said argued that Palestinian identity, memory and the claim to their land were acts of resistance against a system that sought to erase their dignity. By insisting on their right of return and the preservation of their cultural heritage, Palestinians were, in effect, fighting for their humanity. This struggle is not only political but also existential — a fight to reclaim dignity through the reclamation of land.
Under the harsh conditions of occupation, the Palestinian struggle becomes a fight to reclaim dignity as much as territory. Said contended that the issue of Palestine was a “struggle against social injustice” and emphasised that national dignity — the right to live freely on one’s ancestral land — is central to the Palestinian cause. As long as Palestinians are denied control over their land, their capacity to live with dignity is compromised. This denial is manifested in the arbitrary evictions, demolition of homes and daily humiliations experienced at checkpoints and during military raids.
The Palestinian resistance employs memory as a weapon against dispossession. Nur Masalha coined the term “memoricide” to describe the systematic erasure of Palestinian history — planting forests of pine trees to cover the ruins of villages and replacing Arabic place names with Hebrew ones. This deliberate suppression of memory is itself an affront to dignity, because it denies Palestinians the right to recount their own history. Reclaiming this history, through writings by scholars such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad is essential for restoring dignity, because it reasserts the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative.
The lives of everyday Palestinians — whether a family in Sheikh Jarrah clinging to its ancestral home or a farmer tending olive trees amid a militarised landscape — demonstrate that dignity is preserved through acts of resistance. As Noam Chomsky, citing Sara Roy’s analyses, observed, Gaza exemplifies the demand for dignity despite being reduced to a “showcase for de-development”. Each act of defiance, each preserved memory of the lost villages, reaffirms the claim that dignity is the foundation upon which the Palestinian identity is built.
South Africa
Few histories illustrate the intertwined nature of land and dignity as starkly as South Africa’s. Under apartheid, policies such as the 1913 Natives Land Act systematically confined the black majority to impoverished reserves while the white minority controlled most of the land. This systemic dispossession was a constant reminder of the humiliation inflicted upon black South Africans. Like Palestinians, many South Africans were rendered landless in their own country, an outcome that has had lasting effects on dignity and identity.
Post-apartheid, South Africa has wrestled with the task of land reform as a means of restoring dignity. While the Constitution enshrines the right to restitution for those dispossessed, progress has been slow. The debate over “expropriation without compensation” centres not only on economic justice but also on the imperative of restoring human dignity.
Indigenous nations
In the contexts of the settler-colonial nations of North America, Australia and New Zealand, indigenous peoples have similarly been dispossessed of their ancestral lands. The legacy of policies such as Manifest Destiny and Terra Nullius has rendered indigenous populations minorities in their own lands, much like Palestinians are today in their ancestral territory.
For indigenous communities, land is not a commodity but an integral part of identity and spiritual existence. The fight for Indigenous land rights, encapsulated in movements like Land Back and reaffirmed through instruments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is fundamentally a struggle for dignity.
In these societies, the struggle for land is often intertwined with environmental justice. For indigenous peoples, reclaiming land is a way to restore not only cultural heritage but also the ecological balance, which is seen as essential to human dignity. Indigenous peoples view their lands as the living embodiment of their identity.
Agrarian movements
Global agrarian movements — such as Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) and India’s peasant protests — offer another facet of the land-dignity nexus. In Brazil, where vast estates have long been controlled by a small elite, the MST has organised landless workers to occupy idle lands, transforming them into self-sustaining communities.
As one MST leader explained, the struggle for land is not only about economic survival but about preserving a “dignified life”. Similarly, in India, landless farmers and Adivasi communities have mobilised in defence of their rights, emphasising that the control of land is inseparable from the maintenance of honour and self-respect.
Academic Adam Hanieh examines how neoliberal policies have exacerbated land dispossession in regions as diverse as Palestine, Brazil and India, arguing that the commodification of land under global capitalism undermines the possibility of dignified living. Reclaiming land is a means to challenge an economic order that values profit over people.
The inextricable link
From Palestine and settler states to South Africa and agrarian movements, a common thread emerges: land is more than a physical resource — it is the foundation of identity, freedom and dignity. The logic of settler colonialism and the dispossession of native peoples is not a series of isolated events but an enduring structure of domination. In every context, whether through military occupation, apartheid policies or neoliberal land grabs, the seizure of land denies a people their humanity.
Memory, narrative and legal claims have become essential tools for reclaiming dignity. Nur Masalha reminds us that the erasure of Palestinian history is itself an act of humiliation. In response, scholars such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad have worked to reassert the Palestinian narrative, emphasising that the struggle for land is also a struggle to reclaim identity and dignity. Likewise, in South Africa and among indigenous people, reclaiming land is a central part of broader movements to revalue and restore communities that have been systematically marginalised.
In weaving together the experiences of Palestinians, South Africans, indigenous nations, Brazilian peasants, and other communities around the world, it is evident that the struggle for land is fundamentally a struggle for dignity. This is not a series of isolated conflicts but a common human story — a collective fight against historical injustices that have left peoples dispossessed and dehumanised.
Only when the struggles for land are met with genuine policies of restitution, legal recognition and global solidarity will the vision of a world where all people live with dignity be realised. –
Ali Ridha Khan is a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.
