From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free - A Slogan for all, a Solution for no one
The Asian Crime Century briefing 64
The violence in Israel has continued to drive political debate in many other countries. The conflict involving Israel now involves four fronts with war in Gaza against Hamas, violent exchanges with Palestinians in the West Bank, and exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as other protagonists in Syria. These events taking place over 2,000 miles away from London and over 5,000 miles from Washington DC have generated intense political debate in the UK and US, motivated thousands of people to protest, and polarised views.
Since the Hamas terror attack on Israel on 7th October 2023, which involved the killing of 1,139 people (including 71 non-Israeli foreign nationals) and the kidnap of around 250 people, there has been a reported increased in antisemitic hate incidents in the UK to 4,103 in 2023 compared to 1,662 in 2022. The Hamas terror attack has been described as a “pogrom”, which the Holocaust Encyclopaedia describes as a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently” that refers historically to attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. Soon after the Hamas attack, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that “We should call it by its name: it was a pogrom.”
The United Nations has concluded that the Hamas terror attack involved sexual violence, rape, gang rape, torture and killing. Evidence of the brutality of the attack shown to journalists, international observers, and politicians has caused revulsion amongst all who have reviewed the images. However, Hamas justified the attack and stated in a document titled “Our Narrative” that they did not seek to harm civilians and claimed that:
“We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.”
The brutal murder of over 1,200 people in Israel was shocking to the world, but the consequent Israeli military attack in Gaza has led to an estimated over 30,000 people being killed in the fighting. Those killed included large numbers of women and children, and clearly most of the casualties are civilians. The Israeli Defence Forces have claimed that they are targeting Hamas fighters hiding amongst the population in a densely populated urban environment, but civilians are suffering in the powerful air and ground assault.
Hatred has been unleashed by the Hamas terror attack. The violence of the Hamas fighters who raped and murdered people on 7th October was clear. But the bombing and shelling by the IDF with insufficient regard for civilian safety in Gaza is also apparent. The outcome is a reiteration of hatred between Israelis and Palestinians as well as polarised extremist views around the world.
Last week the UK government published last week a new definition of ‘extremism’ which comes after repeated mass demonstrations in London and around the country in support of a ceasefire in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. The definition is not intended for criminal law but to guide cross-government engagement principles.
The UK government contends that “Most extremist materials and activities are not illegal and do not meet a terrorism or national security threshold. Islamist and Neo-Nazi groups in Britain, some of which have not been proscribed, are operating lawfully but are seeking to replace our democracy with an Islamist and Nazi society respectively. They are actively radicalising others and are openly advocating for the erosion of our fundamental democratic rights. Their aim is to subvert our democracy.”
Controversy around the new definition has included concern that it will lead to the suppression of free speech, which for many people includes the right to publicly chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”. This chant has become a new soundbite of our times in an age of polarisation on most major issues. Diverse political issues increasingly involve the simplification of complex disputes into soundbites and chants that leads to increased polarisation of views amongst large sections of the population.
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” requires careful thought to determine what it means to many different people and groups. The simplicity of the chant as a slogan representing a point of view has become the rallying cry for large numbers of people who bestow a meaning based on their own views. Taking the time to think about or to consider what the slogan may mean to others is not a characteristic of people used to the immediacy of social media gratification of maximum 280 characters tweets.
Chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is satisfaction for large numbers of people who are appalled by the violence in Gaza that they have watched continuously on news media and need to say something to make them feel that they are contributing to the situation. It is a soundbite that satisfies people watching the death in Gaza on television news but that achieves nothing in the violent reality of Middle East realpolitik.
Politicians have clutched on to the mass movement of slogan chanting by joining protesters and also introducing motions in parliament for an immediate ceasefire, which will not end violence or provide a lasting solution. Writers and commentators have also succumbed to the emotional simplicity of the slogan, many failing to analyse the history or meaning of the words to others, but instead only saying what it means to them.
Emotion prevails over analysis on such polarised issues as the meaning of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”. Such a simple slogan that so many people now rejoice in chanting has many connotations, which should be better understood. To develop a better understanding, we should review what has the land “from the river to the sea” has been to others.
The Ottomans from the River to the Sea
During the Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922), ‘Palestine’ was an area of shifting boundaries that was largely an administrative division of the province of Syria. The primary Ottoman administrative division was the eyalet, or province. The subdivision of eyalets were sanjaks, or districts.
After Ottoman administrative reorganisation in the second half of the 19th century, the lands of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories were within the Damascus eyalet, which was divided into multiple sanjaks that included Acre, Gaza, Nablus, and Jerusalem, with the latter being the most important administrative area. These administrative divisions changed several times as different Grand Viziers in the Sublime Porte in Istanbul implemented their own reforms.
The Ottomans carefully managed the administrative divisions in the Damascus eyalet, not least because of the sensitivity of the Islamic, Jewish and Christian holy places and communities co-located in Jerusalem which is why the city was controlled by a governor and designated as a sanjak with changing boundaries. By the early 20th century, the sanjak of Jerusalem stretched from the Dead Sea in the east to the Mediterranean coast in the west, as far south as the Gulf of Aqaba. However, these often changing boundaries were based on Ottoman administration and not geographical or ethnic factors.
The British from the River to the Sea
The three sanjaks of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre were united at the end of World War One to constitute Palestine under the British Mandate. The sanjaks of Palestine were first placed under British military rule as an occupied territory and then as a Mandate of the League of Nations. The changing international attitudes to the previously Ottoman sanjaks were indicated in 1917 with the ‘Balfour Declaration’, which was sent from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Walter Rothschild in 1917, and signaled British government support for a Jewish homeland. The brevity of the Balfour Declaration is notable, given the long-lasting impact:
“His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The Jewish population of Palestine was a minority, and in a census conducted by the British administration in 1922, the population was listed as consisting of 590,890 Moslems, 83,794 Jews, and 73,024 Christians. Given that Jews made up only around 14 per cent of the population of Palestine, the statement by the British government that following the entrustment of administration of the territory of Palestine to the British they would “be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on 2 November 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” caused discontent amongst the Arab population.
The subsequent growth of Jewish immigration into Palestine added to Arab discontent and led to violence. There was a lack of security for the minority Jews, highlighted during the ‘Nebi Musa riots’ in April 1920 that resulted in five Jews killed and 216 injured. British authorities refused permission to Haganah (the Zionist paramilitary organisation) to deploy to protect Jews, and British troops stopped Haganah personnel from entering the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. After the riots Vladimir Jabotinsky and other Jewish defence leaders were arrested for illegal possession of firearms and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, which probably convinced many Jews that the British Mandate authorities were anti-Semitic.
Jewish immigration continued and in September 1920 the British authorities allowed 16,500 certificates for Jewish families to settle in Palestine. This fueled more Arab discontent and there were attacks on Jews in Jaffa in May 1921 resulting in the death of 21 Jews and over 100 wounded. Palestine was relatively peaceful until 1929 when Arab riots reoccurred, and illustrated how pogroms against Jews reoccur.
The brutality of the 1929 riots was shocking, and described in Tom Segev’s ‘One Palestine, Complete’. British Mandate Police Superintendent Raymond Cafferata deployed his small contingent of officers to try to suppress Arab rioters in Hebron and witnessed horrific violence, including inside one house “An Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword”. In Hebron 67 Jews were killed; two Rabbis and five other men were castrated; a baker was burned to death; a pharmacist was killed and his wife and daughter raped and then killed; there were numerous cases of torture.
The 1929 riots show the hatred at the time of Arabs for Jewish immigrants, who they considered to be colonists from Europe and different from the long time Jewish residents of Ottoman Palestine. These demonstrations of hatred convinced many Jews that they had to more aggressively defend their people and in 1931 members of Haganah left the organisation and formed a separate group called Haganah-Bet (‘Haganah second’) and started to train members in offensive tactics.
In 1936 the Haganah and Haganah-Bet were reconciled but more radical members refused to submit to the authority of Haganah and formed the Irgun Zvai Le’umi (‘National Military Organisation’), known as Irgun and also its Hebrew acronym Etzel. Events of the next several years split Haganah and Irgun even further because of their disagreements regarding how best to respond to Arab violence and to British vacillation regarding creation of a Jewish homeland and increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine. The differences between moderate Jews and extremist Zionists were apparent during this period in Palestine, with extremists gaining a strong voice to protect Jews from continued pogroms.
The British were clearly eager to leave Palestine and in 1937 proposed a partition plan. The plan was rejected by Arabs who demanded an independent Palestine with no Jewish immigration and by Jews who were only allocated a fifth of the land. This rejection led to the Arab Revolt from 1937 that incited further Jewish violence in response, and in 1938 a total of 5,708 terrorist incidents were recorded.
In 1939, the British government changed their approach and declared in a White Paper that “His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will.”
The new British policy included intent to create an independent Palestine governed by both Arabs and Jews within ten years, preceded by a transition period during which Palestinian people would take a greater role in government; Palestinians to serve as heads of government departments advised by British administrators; security and freedom of access to the holy places; protection of different communities in Palestine; Jewish immigration limited to 75,000 over five years, with no further allowed after that period except with the acquiescence of the Arabs in Palestine; and regulation of the transfer of land from Arabs to Jews.
By May 1948 and the British withdrawal there was very limited British authority in Palestine as open warfare developed between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish group Irgun committed terrorist attacks against Arab civilians because the leaders of the group believed that there was intractable Arab hostility to Jewish immigration into Palestine, to the formation of a Jewish state and homeland, and the resultant savage brutality of Arab pogroms against Jews in 1929 and during the 1930s. The violence and counter violence between Arabs and Jews in the land between the river to the sea has been almost continuous since then.
The Zionists from the River to the Sea
‘Eretz Israel’, the traditional Jewish name, was considered from the outset of the new state to be their ancestral land. In the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, David Ben Gurion said that:
“ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland.”
This was the basis of the Zionist project, to establish a Jewish state from the river to the sea in the ancient land of Eretz Israel. However, Ben Gurion had also reportedly pointed out in 1918 that "There are significant differences of opinion on the question of the boundaries of Eretz Israel, and it is not easy to determine absolutely what Eretz Israel is, and what is not." The reality was that the boundaries of a new Zionist state were impossible to define with reference to any historical reality.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, reportedly stated that the area of the Jewish state should stretch “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”. Many years later, Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, reportedly declared in his testimony to the UN Special Committee of Enquiry in 1947 that “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. It includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.” These definitions go much further than “from the river to the sea”.
This necessitated practicality by the Zionist negotiators, who reportedly obtained agreement from Emir Faisal after the end of World War One that the Balfour Declaration of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was acceptable if there was reciprocal support for Faisal’s Arab kingdom of Syria. The Zionist Organisation negotiators did however propose boundaries for Eretz Israel, which they defines as follows:
"In the North - from a point on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, close to and south of Sidon, continued along the watershed toward the foothills of the Lebanon Mountains, to EI-Qara’un Bridge on the lower Litany River. From there it will continue to El-Bira, along the line that separated the basins of El-Koran and Tiam streams. From here the line will continue south, between the eastern and the western slopes of Mount Hermon, to a point close to and west of the town of Bait Jan. From there the line will continue east, along the watershed of the Muganiya River, close to and west of the Hijaz Railway. In the East - a line that run close to and Io miles west of the Hejaz Railway, to the Gulf of Aqaba. In the West - The Mediterranean Sea."
This version of Eretz Israel was from both banks of the river to the sea. The British essentially stopped this expansive interpretation of a future Zionist state by defining the border of Transjordan along the line of the Jordan River, confining the boundaries of the future Jewish state to west of the river to the east of the sea. Notwithstanding this restriction, many in Israel retained their wish for a greater Eretz Israel that extended to both banks of the Jordan River.
The origin of the Likud party is from the Herut (Freedom) Party under former Irgun terrorist and later Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which in its founding document states that “the Hebrew Homeland, whose territory extends on both sides of the Jordan, is a single historical and geographical unit”. The current chairman of the Likud Party, and current Prime Minister of Israel, is of course Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu.
The Palestinians from the River to the Sea
Palestine has never historically been a cohesive self-governing state in the land that is now Israel, but the Arab people have been inhabitants of the land for centuries. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, an NGO dedicated to defending the rights of indigenous peoples, states that the indigenous peoples of Palestine are the Jahalin, al-Kaabneh, al-Azazmeh, al-Ramadin and al-Rshaida Bedouins. In 1948 when Israel declared independence, many of these tribal people took refuge in the West Bank, which was then under Jordanian rule.
The British Survey in 1950 stated in ‘The Arabs of Palestine’ that “Palestine was a geographical expression, to which a political definition was given by the British Mandate in 1922. The area defined had never formed an administrative unit, still less an independent political unit. None of the peoples who have at any time lived in it have belonged to it exclusively, or have held it at all. For four thousand years it has given place to nomads, colonists, conquerors and refugees. The people who call themselves Arabs have lasted the longest in “Palestine”.”
In its founding charter the Palestine Liberation Organisation stated that “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.” The PLO recognised the political and geographical entity of Palestine with the boundaries that had been created for the British Mandate. The PLO recognised the Jews who had resided in Palestine before what they termed the “Zionist invasion” as Palestinians. However, the PLO also referred often to the role of the Palestinians within the “Arab nation”, but this concept has been absent from the modern Arab states in the Middle East, several of which have become some of the wealthiest countries in the world.
The PLO is essentially a secular organisation dedicated to securing an independent Palestinian homeland, which in 1993 recognised the right of Israel to exist. This is in contrast to Hamas that is essentially a religious organisation with an outlook grounded in Islam, which does not recognise the right of Israel to exist. The Hamas Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement from 1968 illustrates the commitment of the organisation to violent struggle against the Jews in Palestine.
The Introduction states that “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Article Seven states that “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders”, and quotes the Prophet saying "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
Article Fifteen is titled “The Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is an Individual Duty” and states that “In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” Article Twenty Eight states that “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."
Hamas published a slicker “Document of General Principles & Policies” in 2017, which states that “The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people…There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”
The basis of the idea of a Palestinian state expressed originally through the PLO and later through Hamas has been the fundamental opposition to the occupation of the land that made up the British Mandate by immigrant Jews and their creation of a Zionist state. In the reasoning of these organisations, the land from the river to the sea is for Palestinians and immigrant Jews must be expelled, or in the often stated views of Hamas, killed. This is not only anti-Israel, but also antisemitic.
Conclusion
There has only been a land of Palestine administered as a single entity during the British Mandate. During the Ottoman Empire, what we now call Israel and the Palestinian Territories were districts that were part of the province of Syria. The Zionists disagreed for years before the foundation of Israel about what the borders of the Jewish state should be based on ancient biblical references.
The result of this lack of agreed definition has been decades of violence. The reasons for the violence by both sides, the Israelis and also the Palestinians, is complex and fiendishly complicated to settle. A solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict looks further away than ever after the Hamas terror attack of 7th October and the devastating Israeli military response in Gaza. The violence has aroused even greater hatred and antipathy between the inhabitants of the lands between the river and the sea.
It is because of this complexity that writers and commentators have a duty to not over-simplify the issues and certainly not to allow the attempted distillation of the solution into a phrase, slogan, or chant. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is an example of the over-simplification that appeals to people in mass demonstrations because of how easy it is to say.
“From the river to the sea” is an English expression taken to be used by Western people and organisations in support of the Palestinian cause. The Western interpretations of what this phrase means are based only on what individuals think they should mean. One writer recently stated that “ “From the river to the sea” is simply a plea to be rid. It seeks to abolish the divisions, to reclaim equality. It is an uncomplicated rejection of Israel’s laws of human classification and segregation, and an assertion of the most basic right to dignity and self-determination.”
Yousef Munayer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington DC, has stated that supporters of Palestine who invoke the phrase are often misinterpreted as threatening violence, and that “What they are responding to is the fact that, within this space, Palestinians live along with Israelis, but it's the Palestinians that don't have freedom…They don't have justice. They don't have equality. They don't have safety. They don't have security.”
It must be hoped that he is correct and that protesters shout this slogan to call for the rights of Palestinians, but this is not the interpretation of Hamas and other groups committed to ridding Palestine of Jewish immigrants. The slogan empowers the extremists and terrorists of Hamas and other extremist groups who will not provide any peaceful solution to the long term problem of statehood in Palestine except to eradicate Jews from the land from the river to the sea.
Implementing the slogan is impossible, and the only real outcome of such an approach would be greater violence. Jews see the slogan as another holocaust, an existential threat to the existence of a Jewish state that is a safe haven for all Jews from the violence and antisemitism they face elsewhere in the world. Palestinians see the slogan coming from Zionists as another Nakba, a catastrophe for the Palestinian people leading to them being permanently evicted from what remains of their own lands in Gaza and the West Bank.
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a slogan for all, but a solution for no one. Those chanting this slogan and others writing in support of it should consider - A holocaust starts with a pogrom, and a pogrom starts with a slogan.