What does the slogan From the river to the sea Palestine must be free mean exactly I see it a lot in marches against Israel ?
It is a Palestinian call of freedom from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
It would be difficult to be involved in any Palestine-related activism or organizing without coming across this slogan. I am certain it would be equally as difficult not to hear the accusations and supposed meanings behind it as well. All it takes is a quick Google search to see that to many Israelis and their defenders, this slogan is tantamount to a call for “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing of Jews” and even for another Holocaust.
These are some very serious accusations, but as per usual, they have very little basis in reality. These accusations -like many others- are mainly a result of a combination of settler colonial anxiety, projection, deliberate misinterpretation and an enduring bunker mentality.
Let’s break it down:
At the most basic level, this calls for a free Palestine from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean). This roughly encompasses the entire area of the British mandate of Palestine. But what does this actually mean? What would it look like in practice?
According to many Zionists, the only possible interpretation is the mass ethnic cleansing or genocide of Jewish Israelis between the river and the sea, or even worse, the destruction of the Jewish people. They insist that there are no other possible explanations.
A colonial tradition of projection:
These anxieties are hardly unique to Jewish Israelis; settlers in many different colonies throughout history have echoed these same sentiments. If we were to take a look at the narrative surrounding anti-Apartheid South Africa activism and boycotts, we would find eerily similar projections and arguments.
For example, In an article for the Globe and Mail under the title “The good side of white South Africa” Kenneth Walker argued that ending the Apartheid system and giving everyone an equal vote would be a “a recipe for slaughter in South Africa”. Others, such as Shingler, echoed similar claims, saying that anti-racist activists were actually not interested in ending Apartheid as a policy, but in South Africa as a society. Others came out to claim these activists were actually motivated by “anti-white racism”, fueled by “Black imperialism”. Political comics displayed a giant soviet bear, bearing down on South Africa declaring “We shall drive South Africa into the Sea!”
Sound familiar?
As Fred Moten once said:
“Settlers always think they’re defending themselves. That’s why they build forts on other people’s land. And then they freak outover the fact that they are surrounded. And they’re still surrounded.“
Similarly, in Israel equality and the rights of Palestinian refugees are positioned as a diametric opposite to the very life of the Israeli settler. The return of said refugees then becomes nothing short of annihilation. Therefore, not only does the settler seek to deny the return of the native refugees, but to attack the entire concept of these refugees having any rights to begin with.
However, in the rare cases where Israeli advocates even acknowledge that Palestinian refugees were wronged, and that their dispersal around the world was due to Israeli actions, the argument becomes that while it is tragic, it is the only way to keep the Jewish people safe. Once again, this pretence is hardly unique to Jewish Israelis, as a matter of fact, similar arguments were used against the abolition of slavery in the United States. For example, Thomas Jefferson likened slavery to a wolf : “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
How utterly ridiculous this all sounds now.
While the first approach is crude and vile propaganda, designed to instigate fear and panic, it is par for the course for settler societies. Perhaps the second approach stands out a little bit more for its brazen attempt at manipulation. In a final endeavor to center their experiences and erase their victims, settlers frame themselves as the stars of their own tragedy, in the end they were the tragic victims of fate, forced to wield injustice for the sake of self-preservation.
Underlying the logic of both of these approaches are racist assumptions that the colonized are barbaric, bloodthirsty and ruthless. It is a deeply dehumanizing logic, steeped in every colonial and Orientalist trope. The idea that a free Palestine would inevitably lead to genocide comes from the same logic. As a matter of fact, for all the claims of the Palestinians wanting to push Israelis into the sea, only the opposite has occurred in reality.
Haifa, Palestinians are crowded on ships to take them to Acre soon after they were ethnically cleansed by Zionist Jewish forces, April 1948.
Palestinians flee from Gaza’s beaches onto boats during the Palestinian Nakba, 1949. (Photo: UNRWA).
A call to freedom:
Projecting genocidal intent onto even the mildest calls for justice for Palestinians has long been a staple of Israeli Hasbara, these intellectually dishonest interpretations are par for the course. But what is it exactly that Palestinians are calling for when they chant this phrase?
There is no point in denying the reality on the ground: There exists one power between the river and the sea, and it is not the Palestinians. While the Palestinian Authority has some limited administrative powers in certain areas, it has absolutely no sovereign powers. As a matter of fact, Israel even determines who is a Palestinian citizen and who is not, as it is in de facto control of the Palestinian citizen registry. Israel exercises its control and hegemony through a matrix of control consisting of a mish-mash of different legal systems and practices for different ethnicities in different areas.
When Palestinians call for freedom from the river to the sea, they are calling for decolonizationand the dismantling of this racist colonial entitywhich dominates their lives, and seek to replaceit with a unitary civic state where everyone can be equal. This new state would not confer any special privileges to anyone based on their ethnicity or origin, and would not exist at the expense of the subjugation of others.
This is hardly a new or radical position, a unitary democratic state for all of its citizens was suggested by the Arab states as a counter-proposal to the 1947 partition plan. Naturally, this was rejected by the Zionists. That we barely ever hear about the offers that the Yishuv/Israel rejected should be an indicator to the nature of mainstream discussions on Palestine, and the silencing of Palestinian voices. The Palestinian Liberation Organization also called for establishing a secular, democratic unitary state for all its citizens. Naturally, none of these proposals included genocide, ethnic cleansing or mass murder.
Regardless of your ideological leanings, the reality is that we are already living under a de facto one state reality. Israeli politicians proudly boast about never allowing a Palestinian state to materialize. Israeli school books already erase the green line. Israel already rules the lives of everyonethere. Palestinians calling for the dissolution and replacement of this naked colonialism is legitimate and just. The destruction of the Apartheid regime in South Africa did not cause untold slaughter, the undoing of Jim Crow laws did not begin a genocide. Neither will the dissolution of the current Israeli ethnocracy and the decolonization of Palestine.