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More than a month after the Palestinian militant organisation Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Israel’s continued large-scale military response in Gaza has prompted condemnation from many parts of the world. Hamas’s attack led to the deaths of 1,200 people, and Israel’s continuing siege has resulted in more than 11,000 deaths in Gaza so far.
Protest marches have been held in cities such as London, New York, Paris, Brussels, and others, calling for a ceasefire. A popular slogan spotted here is ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, invoking the larger demand against the historical occupation of Palestinian territories. But it has also drawn criticism from a range of sources – from Israel’s official X account to the White House. Where did the slogan originate from, and who has invoked it over the years and why is it criticised? We explain.
How did the slogan originate?
On the face of it, the slogan seems to refer to the two water bodies flanking the piece of land in the Middle East that has seen decades of political conflict. The Mediterranean Sea borders Israel and the Gaza Strip to the West and the Jordan River (that drains into the Dead Sea) lies towards the East of the West Bank.
Thus, the slogan calls for the liberation of Palestine, outlining it as the region that lies in between. Historically, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. This changed following its defeat in World War 1 (1914 to 1918) at the hands of the Allies – Britain, France, Russia, and a few other countries. Palestine was then placed under British rule or mandate, meaning it was intended to have a path for its self-governance or independence in future.
However, several factors prevented this from happening – Britain’s weakening by the time of World War 2 in 1939 and urgency to withdraw from the region, the rise of Zionism (a political ideology that championed an ethnic homeland for Jewish people in Palestine), and the persecution of Jewish people under Germany’s Nazi regime that killed millions of people. It led to a mass migration of Jewish people from Europe to Palestine, seen as a historical homeland, and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
How the statement’s context changed over time
The idea of a UN-proposed two-state solution – the creation of Israel and Palestine – was rejected by Palestinians in 1947. Maha Nasser, an Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote in 2018 that “The reason was that they saw all of Palestine — from the river to the sea — as one indivisible homeland.”
A powerful Israeli state took control, following a war that led to the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinians. This was known as the Naqba or the catastrophe. The status of Palestinians remaining in Israel weakened, with surveillance and curtailment of their rights to work and travel freely. The slogan then emerged in the 1960s.
In subsequent wars between Israel and Arab nations, Egypt came to occupy Gaza in 1957 and Jordan gained control over the West Bank in 1950. These claims would be surrendered by 1967 and 1988 respectively. Israel controlled the areas until the 1990s, when the Palestinians would take over. But by this time, there was a sense of loss among Palestinians and the supporters of its independence, who wanted total “liberation”.
Nasser writes how this position was not about the forcible displacement of Israelis. She quotes a 1974 UN speech by Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat. “When we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination,” he said.
Further, Nasser notes how over the 1980s and ‘90s, Palestinian groups such as Fatah and the PLO “changed their official stance from calling for a single state to supporting a two-state solution.”
This was seen as a concession by many and also saw the rise of the more Islamist, militant ideology in the form of Hamas in 1987. It championed the idea of total control – “from the river to the sea” – in its charter, with a hardline stance on Jews. But by 2017, its new charter said it was against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” aims of the Zionist project, but not against Judaism or Jews. The statement also finds a place in the document: “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
What has its criticism been, and who else has said it?
Last week, outrage followed after US Democrat and Palestinian-American politician Rashida Tlaib shared a video of people sloganeering. “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” Tlaib tweeted.
Later, the House of Representatives passed a censure resolution against her, saying the phrase was “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”
“When it comes to the phrase that was used, ‘from the river to the sea,’ it is divisive, it is hurtful, many find it hurtful and many find it antisemitic,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House spokeswoman. “We categorically reject applying that term to the conflict.”
In the UK, recently sacked interior minister Suella Braverman also believed the statement was a “staple of antisemitic discourse”. Braverman was recently replaced for writing critically about the UK police’s handling of pro-Palestine marches, saying they were too soft on the peaceful protestors.
Israel’s official X account, in 2021, also said in response to a video of the slogan being shouted, that it was “Used by those who call for the elimination of Israel”. However, the statement has not just been used by pro-Palestine groups. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, published a version of the slogan as part of the party’s platform, saying that between the sea and the Jordan River, “there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
The Times of Israel also noted that Religious Zionist politician Uri Ariel said in 2014, “Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there will be only one state, which is Israel.”
