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FOR ISRAELIS, ‘FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA’ IS A REALITY. FOR
PALESTINIANS, IT’S A CRIME  
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Dahlia Scheindlin
February 13, 2025
Haaretz
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_ It is nonsensical, and hypocritical, to arrest or accuse
Palestinians of promoting the ideology of 'From the river to the sea,'
while in Israel, school maps don't show the Green Line and the
government is advancing full annexation _

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a map, as
seen in a screenshot taken from a video posted by the official X
account of the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, credit: X

 

The great existential threat of Palestinians against Israel is back. A
children's coloring book with the title "From the River to the Sea"
leaves no doubt: Palestinians want all of the land, and they want to
destroy Israel. The book is incontrovertible evidence that they incite
their children to this aim of destruction and therefore they must
never, ever have a state of their own.

So goes widespread sentiment in Israel, following the arrest of
booksellers Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna 
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the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem earlier this week.

The police first accused them of selling material involving incitement
to terror. But having failed to produce evidence, they later reduced
their claims to "public disturbance." But lack of evidence even for
that led to the brothers' release after two nights in jail rather than
the eight the police had requested. Disclosure: Mahmoud is a colleague
and a friend – a thoughtful, sharp, warm, sensitive and welcoming
bookstore owner. Images of him and Ahmed in handcuffs are shocking.

Apparently this needs to be said again: Israeli Jews are the last
people on Earth who can complain about Palestinian longing for the
land from the river to the sea. The State of Israel is the mother of
"river to the sea" – using graphic rather than geographic language.
It is nearly impossible to find a map in any public space in Israel
today, from official maps to public art and iconography, showing the
Green Line
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would delineate a hypothetical Palestinian state. Maps in Israel show
the whole land, undivided – in effect, erasing Palestinian political
and national identity.

A private collection of snapshots I've taken around the country or
captured from the internet tells a story as clearly as a coloring
book: a Judaica shop down the block in Tel Aviv has a blue-glass
standing object for your coffee table shaped like the map of Eretz
Israel – no Green Line blemish. A charging stand for electric cars
in Haifa displays a map of its stations spread generously throughout
the Land of Israel – a single unit from the river to the sea (thanks
to my partners in this project who snapped the shot).

Every day, the newspapers print weather maps of the whole land, absent
any Palestine (Haaretz is a lone exception
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In Hostage Square in central Tel Aviv, citizens have filled the place
with art, including a triptych of visual images in which the middle
pillar bears drawings of families hugging children in the shape of the
whole territory of British Mandatory Palestine. The list and the
photos go on.

As for inciting children about river to sea: This is the time to
recall that Israeli public schools are practically barred
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using maps showing the Green Line – no Palestine there either.
Israel's river-to-sea is not just the lucky kid who gets the coloring
book, but every kid in an Israeli school.

It is nonsensical to arrest or even accuse Palestinians of using the
term without mentioning that Israelis live out their own river to sea,
every day. Outsiders: If you didn't realize that Israelis view the
world through Mandate Palestine-shaped glasses – check your basic
understanding of the society you claim to be fighting for. It's better
than exposing yourself as a hypocrite or a liar.

But bumper stickers or paperweights aren't really the problem. The
problem is that Israel implements its river-to-sea vision on the only
map that matters: the ground itself. River-to-sea Israel is hard at
work expanding settlements and the supporting infrastructure,
transferring military powers over the West Bank to civilian arms of
the Israeli state, thrusting the Israeli army into Palestinian cities
like Tul Karm and Jenin after helping to collapse the rule of the
Palestinian Authority. Support or oppose these policies – but tell
the truth.

And in case anyone missed all this physical action, or was unable to
see Israeli maps, the country's lawmakers are screaming "from the
river to the sea" – in Israeli speak – from the rooftops.
Parroting their patrons in the U.S. Senate
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Israel's politicians are advancing a bill this week
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would require Israeli legislation to use the term "Judea and Samaria"
rather than "West Bank"; it already passed a Knesset legislative
committee.

How urgent is this law? It's true that the Israeli army proclamations
issued on June 7, 1967 establishing military rule use the term "West
Bank." Beyond that, laws from 1968 already refer to "areas," which
they define as "the territories being held by the Israel Defense
Forces." I haven't checked every single document, but having read a
great many Israeli laws, it's hard to recall one since that time that
uses the term "West Bank" rather than "Judea and Samaria."

Useless performative legislative debates are surely a good way
for lawmakers to spend their time
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taxpayers, while Israeli hostages in Gaza are being starved, hung
upside down, beaten or sitting in chains.

But other legislation is less performative, quieter and more
consequential. While you weren't watching, the Knesset is advancing a
law to facilitate settlers purchasing West Bank land directly from
Palestinians. In right-wing arguments, this law is intended to rectify
– wait for it – "Jordanian apartheid
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Piecemeal annexation is popular: Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing
opposition party, submitted a bill
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to "extend sovereignty" (annex
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the Jordan Valley. In 2020, a Likud lawmaker submitted a bill
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extend Israeli sovereignty over all Jewish settlements in the West
Bank, calling on the authority of – wait for it – the 1947 UN
Partition Plan. That lawmaker is now Israel's education minister: Yoav
Kisch. On Wednesday, Religious Zionism advanced a bill to annex the
whole West Bank
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doesn't use that term).

Long-term annexation policies to wipe a future Palestinian state off
the map were announced for all to see in the published guidelines of
the 37th government of Israel established in December 2022. U.S.
President Donald Trump might back the idea.

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Trump coyly said
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be making an announcement on the question of West Bank annexation in a
few weeks – but "people like the idea." And in the presence of
Jordan's King Abdullah II this week, when asked if he supports Israeli
annexation of the West Bank, Trump answered with all sorts of happy
noises
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"It will work out well," he said, even "automatically."

The time has come to drop the entire "river to sea" debate for good.
Anyone who accuses Palestinians of a "river to sea" ideology is a
fraud – a master of whataboutism for the river to sea reality of the
State of Israel today. And such a person thinks you are very, very
stupid.

* Israel
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* Palestine
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