‘From the river to the sea’ threatens to drown out any chance for peace

Words matter, especially when it comes to discussing Hamas’ brutal slaughter of Israeli civilians, or the massive civilian casualties in Gaza caused by Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas leadership and tunnels with bombs.

In that context, it is important to understand the meaning of the controversial phrase that thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been chanting, and whose use earned a censure resolution from the U.S. House of Representatives against Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in Congress.

Tlaib claims — and some demonstrators may actually believe — that the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call “for peaceful coexistence” between Israelis and Palestinians. But that would require a willful ignorance of past and present realities.

» READ MORE: Palestinian civilians are suffering at the hands of Israel and Hamas | Trudy Rubin

As I know from decades of covering the Israel-Palestine issue all over the Mideast region, the words “from the river to the sea” have historically been used to mean an Arab Palestinian state over all of the West Bank, Gaza, and the territory of the state of Israel. The phrase was used to reject the 1947 United Nations decision to partition the British-controlled mandate Palestine into two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli.

When Israel accepted partition and declared independence, Arab states invaded the new country to try to take back all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They failed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Palestine Liberation Organization was based in Beirut, and before it recognized the statehood of Israel in the 1990s, the slogan stood for the group’s military effort to destroy Israel.

As for the terrorist group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for the past 16 years, its 1988 charter specifies that the “Zionist state [Israel]” must be destroyed, and all the Jews there killed. It states bluntly that an Islamist state must be established over what it calls all historic Palestinian lands. In other words, from the river to the sea.

Some Hamas supporters cite a 2017 charter update as hinting that the organization could tacitly accept Israel for a short truce period. But the update still states clearly that the Israeli state must be destroyed.

I understand Tlaib’s emotions. She has many relatives still living in a West Bank village and is understandably distressed at the scenes of carnage in Gaza, as Israel tries to destroy Hamas tunnels built under apartment buildings, hospitals, and schools.

Yet it is dishonest to describe the “river to the sea” slogan as an “aspirational call” for peaceful coexistence, as Tlaib does. I assume she is claiming that the slogan hints at a binational state for Jews and Arabs — often referred to by its promoters as a “one-state solution.”

Tlaib should know better. That idea was the stuff of dreamers even before Hamas murdered 1,400 Israeli civilians and took more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7.

On Thursday, I watched footage, largely compiled by Israeli officials from Hamas GoPro footage, that the invaders put out on social media. The horrors shown include terrorists chopping off a head with a garden hoe, killing and burning women and children, and yelling, “Allahu Akbar” over dead bodies.

No one should kid themselves that a one-state solution would be possible now.

In fact, a quick look around the Mideast makes clear why it was always a nonstarter. If you think identity politics is polarizing the United States, in the communal Mideast it rips states and societies apart.

Look at Iraq, where, when a dictator was removed, the country plunged into civil wars between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds. In Lebanon, the only pseudo-democracy in the region, inter-sectarian wars have killed thousands.

Polls show that only a small percentage of Palestinians support the one-state idea. And even among those who do, it is usually viewed as a way station until the Palestinian population outnumbers Jews and Israel becomes a Palestinian Arab state.

Yet, if you are going to denounce the words “from the river to the sea,” you have to be equally critical of the current far-right Israeli government, which promotes its own version of the phrase, and tries to act upon it. Several extremist cabinet ministers hope to annex the West Bank and Gaza and drive many Palestinian civilians into exile. That also is a one-state formula that will bring Israel grief.

If the Palestinian one-state solution is dead, so is the alternative model that was being hyped by messianic Israeli nationalists before the Hamas attack. Namely, that Jerusalem could rule over the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank forever without an ultimate explosion and constant civil war.

So, “from the river to the sea” is a dangerous concept that needs to be discarded. That means that, if Hamas can be dismantled, the two-state side-by-side concept reviled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be revisited seriously — as President Joe Biden has called for.

Yet Netanyahu is still insisting there can only be one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, his Likud party said in its original party platform in 1977 that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty.”

» READ MORE: The roots and nuances of the Israel-Hamas war | Trudy Rubin

Two Israeli cabinet ministers have openly called for pushing West Bank Palestinians out of the West Bank and encouraged radical Jewish settlers to drive Bedouin villagers off their lands.

Some Likud lawmakers have called for expelling all Gazans to the Sinai desert, living in tents far from major cities, jobs and civilization, and building new Jewish settlements in Gaza. One far-right minister, Amichai Eliyahu, suggested nuking Gaza and received only a slap on the wrist from Netanyahu.

“Millions of people around the world were exposed to Eliyahu’s quotes,” wrote Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon. “If Hamas leader, arch-terrorist Yahiya Sinwar wasn’t deep underground, he probably would have sent Eliyahu a special delivery of flowers.”

The possibility of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has become so real that even U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned against it.

Those who rightly reject the pro-Palestinian chanting of “from the river to the sea” should also stand against Israeli efforts to act on that slogan. Those six words represent a red flag.

For whichever side tries to activate them — Palestinians or Israelis — they spell disaster.