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The motto reflects the geography of that original claim: Israel spans the narrow strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But the phrase’s popularity persisted even as territorial claims changed, after the PLO began peace negotiations in the 1990s, formally recognizing Israel’s right to exist and govern itself through the creation of the Palestinian Authority.
For many Palestinians, the phrase now has a double meaning: it represents their desire for the right to return to the cities and towns from which their families were expelled in 1948, as well as their hope for an independent Palestinian state, incorporating the West Bank. which borders the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip, which hugs the Mediterranean coast.
“When they use that phrase, it’s very personal to them,” said Maha Nassar, an associate professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Arizona. “They say, ‘I identify with my ancestral home in Palestine, even if it is not on a map today.’”
“Furthermore, it is an insistence that the Palestinians and Palestine be unified,” he added.
But the phrase has also been adopted over the years by Hamas, which calls for the annihilation of Israel, taking on a darker meaning that has long shaped how it is received.
This has only intensified following the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which the group killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, and took hundreds more hostage. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 10,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks.
“It is an anti-Semitic accusation that denies the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the expulsion of Jews from their ancestral homeland.” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In a post on “That it is a manifestation of coexistence gives cover to terror.”
Many members of Congress, including dozens of Democrats, endorsed a similar view this week in condemning Tlaib for her comments.
The motto does not appear in Hamas’ founding pact of 1988, which promises to “confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it,” not only in the historic Palestinian territory, but throughout the world. However, it appears in a section of the group’s revised 2017 platform. In the same paragraph, Hamas indicates that it could accept a Palestinian state along the borders that existed before the 1967 war, the same borders considered in the Oslo Accords. .
Still, Hamas’s firm commitment not to recognize Israel under any conditions has solidified the impression among critics that whoever repeats the slogan is participating in a rallying cry for the destruction of Israel and, by extension, the people as well. Jew.
“The phrase ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ suggests a vision of the future without a Jewish state, but it does not answer the question of what the role of Jews would be,” said Peter Beinart, a professor at the University of New York City. He added that the meaning of the phrase, however, “depends on the context.”
“If it comes from an armed member of Hamas, then yes, I would feel threatened,” said Professor Beinart, who is Jewish. “If it’s coming from someone who I know has a vision of equality and mutual liberation, then no, I wouldn’t feel threatened.”
Many Palestinians have been dismayed by the outrage over the slogan, which they see as the result of an orchestrated effort by groups such as the ADL to impugn Palestinians’ motives as a means of undermining their cause for statehood and silencing them.
“It is perfectly possible for both peoples to be free between the river and the sea,” said Ahmad Khalidi, a researcher at Oxford University who worked on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations during the 1990s, about Palestinians and Jews. “Is ‘free’ necessarily genocidal in itself? I think any reasonable person would say no. Is the fact that the Jewish population in the area between the sea and the river cannot also be free excluded? I think any reasonable person would also say no.”
Mr. Khalidi noted that Israel’s Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adopted a similar slogan in its original platform from 1977, which stated that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” That phrase could also be seen “as if it had an evil intent,” she said.
Likud has since abandoned the phrase, although the party has opposed a two-state solution in which the Palestinians would have a recognized state alongside Israel. And in 2018, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition pushed through a law enshrining the right to national self-determination in Israel as “exclusive to the Jewish people.”