Abruzzo Region’s President to Italian Alpine Club: “Don’t Use Gran Sasso Mountain to Divide”

“Mountain has always been a place of meeting, respect and coexistence. It is a unifying place, not a dividing one.” This is the message of the president of the Abruzzo Region in a letter to the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) president Antonio Montani. The issue is the dedication by CAI, in 2025, of the Alpine route on Corno Grande, one three main summits of the massif Gran Sasso d’Italia (literally Great Rock of Italy) in the Apennine Mountains. The route has been called “From the river to the sea: dedicated to all Palestinians fighting against Zionists.” Marsilio highlighted that this is neither “a neutral homage or an alpine dedication like others,” but it is a “a political slogan overtly divisive.” Moreover, the Abruzzo president disputes the way “the term ‘Zionist’, which was born to indicate the movement of self-determination of the Jewish people” is used instead as “despising expression.” Marsilio reminds that the slogan “from the river to the sea” refers to “a perspective implying the denial of the existence of the State of Israel.” To reduce such a complex conflict, with victims on both sides, to this expression means “to take a biased stance and risk to feed contrapositions even in contexts that should remain alien to all this.”

Marsilio stresses that the Gran Sasso “is a common heritage. It represents deep values such as freedom, solidarity, and mutual respect. These values must remain above political and ideological divisions.” For this reason, although in full respect of individual freedoms and the Alpine tradition, Marsilio invites CAI to cancel the dedication. “Mountains should remain a neutral space, capable of joining us and not divide, and capable of reminding the humanity unifying us and not set us against each other.”