JAFFA ( 2008-03-28 13:02:37 ) :
Thousands of Israeli Arabs were to attend rallies across the country on Friday to mark Land Day which commemorates the death of six people in 1976 during protests against land confiscation.
This year's central march was to take place in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, where scores of people were expected to protest the government's expropriation of Arab land.
Land Day has been observed by Israel's large Arab minority of 1.2 million every year since six Israeli Arabs were killed in clashes with security forces after a government decision to expropriate land in the Galilee in 1976.
As descendants of about 160,000 Arabs who remained in Israel following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, Israeli Arabs vote and have 10 representatives in the 120-seat parliament.
Their standard of living is 10 times higher than that of Palestinians in the occupied territories, but they see themselves treated as second-class citizens by the Jewish state.
In February 2006, the supreme court recognised that Israeli Arabs faced discrimination.
