The ongoing Nakba: what ‘from the river to the sea’ looks like today
Israel carried out military strikes on at least six countries in 2025. Its inability to fully defeat armed militias in the tiny Gaza Strip with explosives reported to be the equivalent of 13 Hiroshima bombs has not caused it to re-consider its effort to exert regional dominance.
According to analyst Ahmed Alqarout, Israel is fully embracing its ‘super Sparta’ potential, as it continues to establish new military installations in the territory of its neighbors. It repeatedly attacks Lebanon –– at least 50 times in January alone, and Beirut’s residents now live under the buzzing of Israeli drones. Syria, which it reportedly bombed more than 600 times in 2025, continues to be struck on nearly a daily basis. It recently sprayed toxic substances on both countries which could have long-term consequences.
An old map is newly relevant
While the Australian state of Queensland considers following Germany and passing legislationto make anyone who displays or chants the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ liable for two years in prison, the Netanyahu government is intensifying its drive to turn a country which has never had officially declared borders into Greater Israel. The map that the World Zionist Organization presented to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 delineated the borders of its desired state stretching from the Mediterranean across the Litani River deep into present-day Lebanon, across Syria’s Golan Heights and across the Jordan River. The ambition to control the entire West Bank and Coastal aquifers, and the Jordan River and its headwaters in Syria and Lebanon which was part of the Zionist project from its inception now appears within reach.
Israel has also been expanding its arms exports. On Feb. 6, The Intercept reported that the US was buying $210 million worth of cluster munitions from Israel. Neither the US nor Israel are among the 112 countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Another onslaught on Iran may be on the Trump-Netanyahu agenda. On Feb. 12, while they held their seventh meeting together, there were reports that the president was considering sending a second US aircraft carrier and strike force to the Arabian Sea bordering Iran. It is not clear whether Netanyahu succeeded in convincing Trump that the current negotiations with Tehran should be expanded to include the demand that it end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and halt its development of ballistic missiles as well as its nuclear program, or if they discussed plans to go for all-out regime change. War-mongering Netanyahu officially joinedTrump’s Board of Peace while visiting Washington.
Dismantling the Oslo map
On Feb. 8, Netanyahu’s security cabinet fell in line behind the Messianic finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, and pro-annexationist defense minister Israel Katz. They announced a series of measures that would further undermine the Palestinian Authority (PA) and expand Israeli control over what the Oslo process designated as Area A (18 % of the West Bank under full PA administrative and police control) and Area B (22% under PA administrative and joint PA-Israel security control). Oslo gave Israel total control over the more than 60 percent of the West Bank designated as Area C, where settler/army violence has been steadily erasing the presence of Palestinian farmers and herders. As Zena Tahhan wrote in Drop Site (Feb. 7), “what was once creeping encroachment by settlers has escalated over the past three years into a state-backed campaign of mass expulsion.”
The new measures give Israel oversight of Areas A and B “in all matters relating to water violations” as well as over archaeological sites and the environment, and enable settlers to embed themselves within Palestinian cities and towns as they have long done in Hebron. In Smotrich’s words, “We are deepening our roots in all parts of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state.”
The new stipulations remove pre-1967 Jordanian rules that prevented non-Muslims from buying land, and “allow Jews to purchase land in Judea and Samaria just as they purchase [land] in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.” (Judea and Samaria constitute the ‘Biblical heartland’ according to Jewish Messianic beliefs, and there are now attempts in US state legislatures to use those names instead of the ‘West Bank’ on official documents). Long classified records of land ownership will now be open to the public so Jews know who to approach (and pressure) for potential sales.
In addition, the measures further expand Israel’s control over Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque (Tomb of the Patriarchs) because of its religious significance. And a new Israeli “dedicated municipal authority” will be set up to oversee Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.
Opening the door to annexation and mass expulsion
The setters’ Yesha Council said the measures were among “the most significant decisions made by the State of Israel since its return to Judea and Samaria 58 years ago.” While PA officials called the new rules "the final nail in the coffin of the authority and the Oslo Accords,” the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar denounced Israel’s moves for “accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people”. See their joint statement here. In the words of the ‘two-state’ Israeli group Peace Now, “Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in Gaza, but in practice he chose to topple the Palestinian Authority, to annul the agreements Israel signed, and to force a de facto annexation on us, in total opposition to the will of the nation, Israel’s interest, and the clear position of President Trump.” According to Mondoweiss staff writer Qassam Muaddi, “While Israel did not announce a de jure annexation of the West Bank, it has laid the legal groundwork for it.”
The UK strongly condemned Israel’s decision to “alter the geographic or demographic make-up of Palestine” and urged Israel to “reverse these decisions immediately.” A White House official had nothing to say about the impact of the measures on Palestinians when commentingthat “a stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”
In the view of Israeli journalist Amira Hass, ‘a stable West Bank’ is no longer Israel’s goal. Instead, Israel is now bent on mass displacement from the West Bank, either ‘voluntary’ or forced, and “the target now is Palestinian sumud, steadfastness. And because it’s the target, it’s treated as if it were terrorism. No wonder the fear of what is likely to happen in the near future is spreading alongside the widespread impoverishment….The line separating expulsions from mass slaughter is thin to the point of invisibility, as the army has taught us in Gaza. This isn’t a prophecy but another desperate cry for the world to wake up.”
While the Israel government focuses on economically squeezing the lives of Palestinians and promoting the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, a Trump donor made his private jet available to fly deported Palestinians from the US to the West Bank.
Gaza: where Trump can be king
Soothed by the misguided notion that a ceasefire is in place, world leaders and the mainstream media do not appear to be paying much attention to Gaza and what journalist Victoria Brittain calls the “lawless inhumanity” being meted out by Israel and the United States. But the dystopia that is in store for Palestinians under Trump’s so-called peace plan has been described in scathing terms by numerous analysts, among them Peter Beinart who wrote as follows in the Feb. 4th Jewish Currents:
“Some commentators have suggested that Gaza is now under ‘international trusteeship.’ But it’s worse than that. It’s under Trump’s individual trusteeship. The Board of Peace authorizes him and his cronies to plunder the Strip for personal gain. What is emerging in Gaza may resemble less Mandatory Palestine between 1917 and 1948, which was ruled by the British government, than the Congo between 1885 to 1908, which was the personal property of one man, King Leopold II of Belgium….So it may be in Gaza that, through the Board of Peace, Trump’s neo-royalism will gain its fullest expression. The US may no longer be able or willing to ‘police’ the world. But in a 25-mile-long prison along the Mediterranean, where Washington has just helped oversee a genocide, Trump can truly crown himself king.”
The ongoing genocide
What kind of a ceasefire is it which has taken the lives of more than 600 Palestinians during its first four months and killed nearly one child per day since 2026 began? While the death toll continues to mount (it now surpasses 72,000 people), renewed scrutiny of Gaza Ministry of Health numbers – which Israel now agrees are indeed reliable – suggests that they are an undercount. At the end of 2025, Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said that the actual war toll (including deaths from starvation and lack of clean water) could approach 680,000, including 380,000 children under age five.
The Drop Site piece headlined “In Gaza, One Man Is Searching for the Remains of his Family With a Flour Sifter” describes in heartbreaking detail just how hard it is to locate bodies of loved ones under the tons of rubble. In some cases, finding bodies is all but impossible because they were vaporized by “US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C” that have “left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians.”
Israel has reportedly destroyed a third of the cemeteries in the Gaza Strip –including al-Batsh cemetery in the search for the body of hostage Ran Gvili. One partly bulldozed cemetery contained the remains of British and other allied soldiers who were killed during the two World Wars. In keeping with its long-term practice, Israel is refusing to turn over the bodies of at least 520 Palestinians that it holds ––the number could be as high as 766. It is not known whether another long-term practice is ongoing: that of selling Palestinian body parts. Many of the 120 corpses that Israel did return by Oct. 2025 were reportedly mutilated and missing organs.
Whatever the exact numbers, the ‘New Gaza’ which Jared Kushner presented to the Davos Forum would be built on top of a vast graveyard.
A travesty of a ‘peace plan’
On Feb. 2, more than 400 former ambassadors and EU officials published a joint statementurging EU member states to steer clear of Trump’s Board of Peace – which is due to meet in Washington DC on Feb. 19. The statement called on them to abide by “longstanding UN principles, resolutions and international law.” At the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 13 the Board of Peace was strongly condemned by Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, and others for being transformed from its original conception approved by the UN Security Council to a personal vehicle for President Trump. Currently, the only European state on the Board is Hungary.
According to the Feb. 12 Jerusalem Post, on Feb. 19 the Board will be presented with plans for a “multi-billion-dollar reconstruction plan” for Gaza. There will also be reports on the progress made on constituting the ‘International Stabilization Force’ (for which Indonesia has offered 8,000 troops) and the activities of the Palestinian ‘National Committee for the Administration of Gaza’ which has not yet even been allowed to enter Gaza.
What will they hear about the status of the plan’s Phase Two? So far the only effort to ‘disarm Hamas’ has been through blowing up tunnels and killing ‘suspects,’ including children and anyone who approaches or crosses the ‘Yellow Line’ or simply lives in Gaza. And the ‘two-way opening of the Rafah Crossing’ has produced painfully meager results: in the first four days only about 36 injured Palestinians in urgent need of medical care were permitted to cross into Egypt, instead of the promised 50 per day. In the first week about 150 Palestinians who had left the Strip during the war were permitted back into Gaza. Their nightmare transit, which could consume an entire day, involved security screenings by Egypt, the PA under the supervision of EUBAM Rafah (the European Union Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point), a checkpoint manned by the Israel-supported Abu Shabab militia and then a humiliating screening by the Israeli army. After that they were taken by a UN bus to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.
Those who made the journey back spoke of being blindfolded, and robbed of their money and belongings by an Al Shabab ‘Counter-Terrorism Unit’ before being taken to army interrogation rooms for questioning which involved threats and lasted hours. In some cases women have been handcuffed, beaten and strip searched while males have often been denied entry. Returnees are now prevented from bringing anything with them except one bag containing clothing, documents, a single mobile phone and cash amounting to $600 if they declare they will be carrying it 24 hours in advance.
Rutana Riqb, who was returning to Gaza after taking her mother for medical treatment in Egypt in 2024, said that during her interrogation soldiers told her that “you will never enter Gaza. Gaza belongs to us now.”
On Feb. 7, the same message was conveyed by hundreds of Jewish settlers marching on Gaza who declared that “Gaza belongs solely to the people of Israel!” and called for Jewish settlements to be built on Gaza’s ruins.
Will Israel’s impunity endure?
It is an ominous sign when Human Rights Watch ‘blocks’ a report on the ‘Right of Return’ and its connection to Israel’s dismantling of UNRWA and refugee camps in the north of the West Bank, precipitating the resignation of the two leading researchers on its Israel-Palestine team. And it is not reassuring that, according to
whistleblowers, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) “decided to cancel [CPJ’s] Impunity Index simply because it showed Israel is number one.” The Impunity Index had ranked countries where journalists are murdered without consequences.
If, like the CPJ, the mainstream media has largely skirtied the issue of Israel’s impunity, it has drawn back the curtain on the impunity long enjoyed by Jeffrey Epstein’s power elite entourage even as it turned a blind eye to his connections with Israel. An exception is this article in the UK Sunday Times. Epstein’s Israel ties have been the focus of several online news investigations and podcasts – see this, this, this, the Drop Site News series and this piecefrom Middle East Eye. The impunity accorded Israel has also taken a big hit by what widely-viewed videos like this one reveal about its defenders and methods used to silence its critics.
As seen in the UK jury trial that found six Palestine Action defendants not guilty and the High Court ruling on Feb. 13 that the banning of the group “was disproportionate and unlawful,” it will not be easy to squelch the groundswell of support for Palestinian rights.
In the words of Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi, “Ultimately, this genocide has radicalized the world, and people cannot unsee a live-streamed annihilation defended under the banner of liberal democracy. The world has realized that Israel can no longer exist as an apartheid regime. This is precisely what a free Palestine means: to dismantle apartheid, to reclaim Palestine, and to usher in a future of freedom and justice between the river and the sea.”
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
---------The Alliance's 3 min. video "Draining Palestine: Water, Power, and Genocide" has been updated.
Watch it here.
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