‘River to the Sea’ explained in one map and two charts

For Arab Palestinians, the struggle against the State of Israel is the latest of many such fights to oust occupiers. The counter-argument for what the Jewish Virtual Library describes as “pre-State Israel”, is that the Jewish people have maintained links to their historic homeland for 3700 years.

World War I ended four centuries of Turkish rule over Palestine. In 1916, a secret Anglo-French pact agreed on Arab independence – excluding Palestine, which was instead to be ruled by an international administration. In 1917, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour gave an assurance to the Zionist Federation via Lord Rothschild that “a national home for the Jewish people” would be established in Palestine.

After World War I, the mandate system devised by the League of Nations placed many nations that had been ruled by the Ottoman, German and Austro-Hungarian empires under “the tutelage of certain victorious powers”.

The stated aim of the mandates were to maintain peace and promote self-determination. The British ended up with a contradictory policy under the Mandate for Palestine. The “dual obligation” to Zionists and Palestinian Arabs could not be reconciled, and violence escalated with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39.

In November 1947, a UN committee recommended the partition of Palestine into two independent Arab and Jewish states, with the city of Jerusalem carved out under international administration.

Australia abstained from that committee vote. However, H.V. (Doc) Evatt, the Australian statesman who served as president of the UN General Assembly, is credited with driving the partition plan through the UN. Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and fighting immediately intensified as other Arab nations joined Palestinians Arabs in opposition.

The Jewish population sharply increased in the years following 1947. During this time, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled, or were expelled from Israeli territory – an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Around 700,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries during this period.

After the six-day war in 1967, Israel seized control of various territories, including Gaza and the West Bank.

Who said it first?

In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, formed under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, called for the establishment of a single state of Palestine that would run from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1977, the Likud party (its members include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) used the phrase in its founding charter, stating “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”.

In 1988, the Palestinian National Council declared the establishment of the State of Palestine and began the long course to international recognition. This has advanced recently. A largely symbolic vote in the UN was significant because it saw a shift in the position of various nations, including Australia.

Last week, Norway, Ireland and Spain went a step further, announcing they would join the 143 nations that recognise the State of Palestine. Australia – along with the US, the UK and seven other G20 countries – has not.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong noted the UN resolution reaffirmed “unwavering support for the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine”. The Albanese government has repeatedly stated “from the river to the sea” is not consistent with a two-state solution.

The Palestinian view

In 1993, Arafat sent a letter to Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin that stated the PLO recognised Israel’s right to exist. This acceptance of a two-state solution led to the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority to rule over Palestinian territory.

The two sides agreed more problematic issues – including borders, Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and the return of Palestinian refugees – would be discussed in five years time.

But Israel refused to accept the pre-1967 “Green Line” borders as the defining boundary of a two-state solution, and continued to worry about security threats emanating from the Palestinian territories.

The Camp David summit in 2000 was supposed to find a way through, but the disagreements remained daunting, and the talks stalled as Bill Clinton’s presidency came to an end. Later that year, a visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is also the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, sparked riots and triggered the second Intifada, a more violent uprising that claimed more than 5000 lives.

In 2006, the Palestinian national movement split after Hamas defeated the PLO-affiliated Fatah in parliamentary elections. The territories divided between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The Hamas constitution, revised in 2017, rejects “any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”. This allows no room for the State of Israel – or, by definition, a two-state solution.

What changed on October 7

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing about 1200 people, including children, the elderly and 364 young people at a music festival. Another 250 were taken hostage. It was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

The president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Jeremy Leibler’s view is that the Hamas atrocities “gave us a hint of what ‘from the river to the sea’ means in practice. No one of good conscience should be uttering that hateful slogan.”

Ali Kazak, a former Palestinian ambassador, says the October 7 attacks are a continuation of a conflict that began with the violent birth of the modern state of Israel. “We are fighting for our rights.”

He says a two-state solution is not possible. But he rejects the view this is an antisemitic position. It is anti-Zionist, he says.

“When we fought against the Crusaders, we didn’t do so because they were Christians. We fought because they were occupiers. When we fought the Turks, we didn’t fight them because they were Muslims – indeed, we fought alongside the allies to defeat the Turks,” Kazak says.

His view is a free Palestine would be one where “from the river to the sea, people regardless of their religion or ethnicity live equally in one democratic state under the law”.

On Tuesday, a documentary made by former treasurer Josh Frydenberg will examine what he believes is an alarming rise in antisemitism. He is strongly critical of the “from the river to the sea” slogan, as are many of those he interviews, including Dennis Richardson, who believes it carries imputations “which are by definition violent”.

“It clearly implies a one-state solution and the only way you can do that is by obliterating an existing state,” Richardson told The Australian Financial Review.

A call for calm

After Prime Minister Anthony Albanese chided Senator Payman for using the slogan, she tweeted a supportive statement from the Jewish Council of Australia. Formed in February, the group of progressive Jewish academics, teachers, writers and lawyers, aims to speak up for Jews who don’t feel represented by organisations such as the Zionist Federation of Australia.

The JCA acknowledges the one-state solution implicit in the slogan is not aligned with Australia’s long-standing support for a two-state solution, as envisaged by the UN in 1947.

However, taking a stand that is not backed by the government or the opposition should be allowed, says the JCA’s Max Kaiser.

“The context is (Israeli human rights group) B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and the UN Special Rapporteur have all found there is a system of control and inequality and lack of democracy through Israel and the occupied territories, and the expert legal opinion is that this constitutes a system of apartheid from the river to the sea,” he says.

“So, I would say the slogan is a call for freedom and equality in that region, not necessarily a political solution.”

However, he believes a call for a one-state solution “should not be beyond bounds of political speech”. “There is nothing inherently wrong with a one-state solution. A government can get into dangerous territory when it says alternate politics or political ideas are beyond the realms of acceptable.”

Kaiser believes labelling the slogan antisemitic could fan the flames of division, rather than put them out. “It actually is really counter to social cohesion and to trying to find some form of peace and mutual understanding between people who have different political ideas on this topic.”

Writing in his Nonzero newsletter on substack last year, Robert Wright described the slogan as “a kind of Rorschach test for people in the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine camps” that helps “illuminate the challenges posed by human nature to a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict”.

As the Vox news site observed, Wright made that observation in November. Given what’s happened since then, it’s fair to conclude such a resolution has receded even further.