From the river to the sea is “a call for peace” – Palestinian Authority lie
The slogan “from the river to the sea – Palestine will be free,” which is currently popular around the world at anti-Israel demonstrations, is an explicit call to destroy the State of Israel and ethically cleanse its territory of Jews.
“From the river to the sea” refers to the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That area covers the State of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, which is divided into Areas A, B, and C—Area A under PA control, Area B under joint Israeli and PA control, and Area C under Israeli control, according to the Oslo Accords (1993).
Saying “Palestine will be free” in this region means that anything Israeli will cease to exist, which is consistent with PA ideology that nullifies Israel’s right to exist in any borders and considers everything Israeli to be part of “the occupation.”
As Palestinians and those who seek Israel's destruction, together with ignorant and naïve supporters, have been screaming the “from the river to the sea” slogan at demonstrations around the world, others have criticized it for what it is: a call for Israel’s destruction.
To combat the criticism, a regular columnist of the official PA daily tried to whitewash the slogan as “an ambitious call for freedom, human rights, and coexistence in peace”!
In his column, Ammar Jamhour complained that the slogan is being defined by some as one that “encourages hatred and is antisemitic.” Instead, he defended it as:
“A spontaneous expression, whose goal is not to kill Jews or throw them into the sea, as the Zionist lobbies that oppose the Palestinian national rights claim. The truth is that it expresses the Palestinians’ suffering and the desire to achieve freedom and independence…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 22, 2024]
Speaking in the name of all “those who sound this slogan,” Jamhour continued to whitewash the call for Israel’s elimination as “an ambitious call for coexistence”:
“The sounding of this slogan by Palestinians does not mean eliminating and negating the Jewish presence. Those who sound this slogan think that it is tantamount to an ambitious call for freedom, human rights, and coexistence in peace, and not for death, destruction, or hatred…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 22, 2024]
Maybe the demonstrators around the world are buying into this. But, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented, numerous statements by Palestinian leaders testify that “from the river to the sea” means the destruction of Israel.
Jamhour himself made it evident that the slogan is all about getting rid of Israel when he wrote the following:
“The truth is that it [the slogan] expresses the Palestinians’... desire to achieve freedom and independence; whether through liberation from the Israeli occupation and establishing the Palestinian state… or whether – as some think – through a call for one binational state that will include the Palestinian and Israeli peoples…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 22, 2024]
Whether the Palestinians seek “liberation from the Israeli occupation,” which they believe is “from the river to the sea,” or “one binational state” (an option which the writer himself is clearly against when he says “as some think”) – either way, it means the State of Israel will cease to exist.
Fatah expresses this goal explicitly when teaching children about the complete ethnic cleansing of Jews:
“Algeria received independence in 1962, after 132 years of colonialism… At the end of the period of French colonialism, the number of French settlers in Algeria stood at approximately a million, and they all fled to France and left Algeria to the Arabs and Algerians. Algeria’s experience assures that the Jewish settlers in Palestine will disappear in the end.” (Highlight in the original.) [Read the full report: “Teaching Terror to Tots” about Fatah’s Waed Magazine]
The following are representative statements by PA and Fatah leaders documented over the last decade by PMW:
- Top PA official Rajoub: “All of Palestine – from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea – it's all occupied” (2013)
Fatah Central Committee member Tirawi: “Drive out the occupier from the entire pure land, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea” (2014)
Fatah: “From its Sea to its River... it is ours” (2015)
Official PA TV game show: “Palestine" stretches "from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River” (2016)
PFLP’s “blood oath to the Palestinian people” to continue until “the establishment of our state on all of the land of the Palestinian homeland from the [Jordan] River to the Mediterranean [Sea]” (2017)
Rector of Al-Istiqlal University: “We the Palestinians have a great dream before us: To liberate Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea” (2018)
Fatah official: We “will not relinquish a grain of soil from the land of historical Palestine from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River” (2019)
Fatah official: “Our Palestinian land is from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea. I dare any Palestinian, any senior Palestinian official, or any Palestinian leader to reduce the Palestinian map to the West Bank and Gaza!” (2020)
PA Min. of Education to kids: There is no Israel, “the entire land is ours, from the Sea to the River” (2021)
Jenin District Governor: “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians from the River to the Sea” (2022)
Fatah official: “Long live Palestine, from the River to the Sea” (2023)
Preacher on official PA TV: “It is our duty to fight… We reject all the expressions of the occupation, and Allah willing Palestine will return free, from its [Mediterranean] Sea to its [Jordan] River” (2024)
The following is a longer excerpt of the column by Ammar Jamhour that whitewashed the “from the river to the sea” slogan in the official PA daily:
Headline: “From the sea to the river: The struggle around the slogan and expression at Meta company”
“The expression or slogan ‘from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River’ is used as part of campaigns of support whose goal is to stop the war against the Gaza Strip (i.e., the 2023 Gaza war; see note below). This is one of the common slogans at the demonstrations that broke out in European capitals, the US, and Australia.
Since the outbreak of the war against the Gaza Strip, the company ‘Meta’ (Facebook) [parentheses in source] is receiving complaints whose goal is to ban the use of this slogan, erase it, and define it as a slogan or post that encourages hatred and is antisemitic.
I see no problem in publishing this slogan on the Facebook website. Even though there are those who think this expression is controversial to a certain degree, it can be defined as a spontaneous expression, whose goal is not to kill Jews or throw them into the sea, as the Zionist lobbies that oppose the Palestinian national rights claim. The truth is that it expresses the Palestinians’ suffering and the desire to achieve freedom and independence; whether through liberation from the Israeli occupation and establishing the Palestinian state, which already exists thanks to the natural and historical right (sic., there has never been a state of “Palestine”), or whether – as some think – through a call for one binational state that will include the Palestinian and Israeli peoples…
The sounding of this slogan by Palestinians does not mean eliminating and negating the Jewish presence. Those who sound this slogan think that it is tantamount to an ambitious call for freedom, human rights, and coexistence in peace, and not for death, destruction, or hatred…
In accordance with the content management policy, this slogan does not contain terrorist or antisemitic elements, because Israel’s stubbornness, its rejection to accede to the UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on establishing a sovereign Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, and its official opposition to the two-state solution, [prove that] it wants to rule Mandatory Palestine from the sea to the river, including the territories that were occupied in 1967…
The truth is that the slogan ‘from the sea to the river’ is a slogan demanding justice and equality for all in light of the Israeli racism against everyone who is not Jewish. It is also considered a call for peace and equality 75 years after the establishment of the Israeli state, and after an Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians, which has continued for decades. This is because there is not one inch of the land from the river to the sea where the Palestinians enjoy freedom, justice, and equality – and this is justification for repeating this slogan.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 22, 2024]