One Arab (or Islamic) state from the river to the sea

Israel ends; Palestine covers the whole land as an Arab state (PLO Charter 1968) or an Islamic one (Hamas).

What happens to Israeli Jews

Not recognised as a people. 'Go back to Europe' — but about half of Israeli Jews descend from Middle Eastern and North African communities that were driven out of Arab countries; there is nowhere to go back to.

What happens to Palestinians

Sovereignty over the whole land.

What it requires

Defeating or dissolving Israel
Deciding what happens to roughly 7 million Jews — the 1968 Charter recognises as Palestinians only Jews resident before 'the Zionist invasion'
Denying Jewish peoplehood ('Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality')

When a solution needs a people to disappear

Rwanda, 1994: Hutu Power propaganda cast the Tutsi as foreign invaders who didn't belong — a colonial-era myth made them "Hamitic" newcomers — and radio called them inyenzi, cockroaches. In about 100 days an estimated 500,000–800,000 people were killed, most of them Tutsi.

The pattern is old and simple: a people is declared not to belong, it has nowhere else to go, and the language about it dehumanises. What follows is expulsion or mass killing. In this conflict the pattern runs both ways — "the Palestinians are really Arab immigrants; they can go to Jordan" and "the Zionists are colonisers; they can go back to Europe".

If the solution you favour only works when millions of people are gone, ask how they would go. And if you accuse the other side of genocide while favouring such a solution, look at what you are supporting.

Who supports it

Program of Hamas (2017 document, Art. 20) and of the 1968 PLO Charter. Among Western supporters of 'from the river to the sea', 67.8% dropped the slogan once this outcome was spelled out (Hassner 2023).

What history says

Jews of Arab lands, 1948–1970s — around 850,000 left or were driven out
Algeria 1962 — about a million 'settlers' fled; tens of thousands of harkis (Algerians who had sided with France) were killed
Rwanda 1994 — see 'When a solution needs a people to disappear' on this page
October 7, 2023 — what 'resistance by any means' meant in practice

The hard questions

What happens to 7 million people who have no other homeland?
Who decides who may stay?
Does calling a people 'colonisers' or 'Nazis' make their removal feel justified — and where has that led before?

Arguments that point here

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”◆ Motte and bailey◆ Same slogan, different goals◆ Which Palestine?“Israel is a settler-colonial state.”◆ Which territory?◆ Which Zionism?“Palestine was definitely a thing — there was even a newspaper called Filastin in 1911 — and almost no Jews lived there, so Israel was a hostile takeover.”◆ Which Palestine?◆ Which territory?“Only a small share of ancient Jews ever left; Palestinians are the real descendants of the ancient inhabitants, and today's Jews are mostly Europeans.”◆ "They all…"“Zionists are the modern Nazis.”◆ The strict enemy frame◆ "They all…"