“From the river to the ocean, Palestine shall be free,” protesters chant.
The slogan raises a fundamental query.
Which river? Which sea? And what Palestine do they imply?
The phrase refers back to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That’s the land the place the State of Israel stands immediately.
The Palestine identify historical past is sophisticated. It strikes via Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and trendy Arab nationalism.
However one level stays central: the identify Palestine was by no means the identify of an historic sovereign Arab state.
Roman Palaestina
The Roman Empire took management of Judea in 63 BCE.
After the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, Rome renamed the province of Judaea as Syria Palaestina. Jerusalem additionally obtained a Roman identify: Aelia Capitolina.
For Jews, this was not a impartial administrative change. It attacked Jewish identification, Jewish reminiscence and the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
The Latin identify Palaestina got here from the Greek Palaistinē, a time period linked to the Philistines.
The Philistines lived alongside the southwestern coastal plain of historic Canaan. Students typically join them to the Peleset, one of many Sea Peoples talked about in historic Egyptian information.
Archaeological and genetic analysis additionally factors to an Aegean or southern European element in early Philistine origins.
The phrase Peleshet in Hebrew referred to Philistia, the land of the Philistines. It didn’t seek advice from an Arab state.
Editor’s Word: Nurit Greenger examined historic Palaestina and Palestine in a 2024 NewsBlaze article based mostly on Hadriani Relandi’s 1714 work.
Palestine Title Historical past By way of Language
Over the centuries, Peleshet, Palaistinē and Palaestina advanced into Palestine in English and Filastin in Arabic.
The identify continued as a geographic time period.
However geography and sovereignty aren’t the identical factor.
A area can carry a reputation for hundreds of years with out changing into an impartial state by that identify.
That distinction issues within the trendy argument over Israel, Palestine and the that means of the river-to-sea slogan.
Ottoman Empire Interval
The Ottoman Empire dominated the land for about 400 years, from 1516 to 1917.
Throughout Ottoman rule, the area was typically known as Palestine by Europeans and others as a geographic description. However the Ottomans didn’t create a sovereign Arab state known as Palestine.
They administered the world via Ottoman districts and provinces, together with the Jerusalem district and surrounding districts related to Damascus and Beirut.
Up to now, the historic document reveals a area recognized by a number of names.
It doesn’t present an impartial Arab state known as Palestine.
British Mandate for Palestine-Eretz Israel
The British Mandate for Palestine got here into pressure on September 29, 1923, and led to Might 1948.
The Mandate created a definite political entity known as Palestine beneath British rule.
Hebrew utilization included the abbreviation א״י, standing for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
Folks born throughout the Mandate interval obtained paperwork beneath British Mandate Palestine. Jews born there is also known as Palestinian beneath British administrative terminology.
That historic reality is commonly forgotten.
The phrase Palestinian didn’t initially exclude Jews residing within the land.
From The River to The Sea
“From the river to the ocean, Palestine shall be free” refers back to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Which means Israel.
Some activists describe the slogan as a name for freedom. Many Jews and Israelis hear one thing very totally different: a name to erase Israel from the map.
That’s the reason the slogan carries such pressure.
It doesn’t merely name for higher circumstances in Gaza or Palestinian self-government in components of Judea and Samaria.
It factors to the entire land between the river and the ocean.
Biblical Declare to The Land of Israel
For Jews, the declare to the Land of Israel begins within the Bible.
The Abrahamic Covenant stands on the heart of that declare. In Genesis 12:1–3, God instructions Abraham to go away his homeland and go to the land He’ll present him.
Genesis 12:7 says: “To your offspring I’ll give this land.”
Genesis 26:3 repeats the promise to Isaac.
Genesis 28:13–14 repeats the promise to Jacob.
Ezekiel 37:21 speaks of gathering Israel from among the many nations and bringing them again to their land.
This biblical basis formed Jewish reminiscence for hundreds of years.
It additionally formed the Zionist return to the Land of Israel.
Theodor Herzl and Zionism
Theodor Herzl, the visionary of recent political Zionism, understood that Jewish assimilation in Europe wouldn’t finish antisemitism.
Herzl coated the Dreyfus Affair in France. The antisemitic fury round that case helped persuade him that Jews wanted a state of their very own.
In 1897, Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel.
In 1898, he visited the Land of Israel.
In 1903, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain raised the concept of a Jewish refuge in British East Africa, generally known as the Uganda Scheme. Herzl thought of it as a short lived refuge for Jews dealing with hazard, however he didn’t abandon the Zionist aim of a homeland within the Land of Israel.
In 1905, after Herzl’s dying, the Seventh Zionist Congress rejected the Uganda Program.
The choice confirmed what Zionism had at all times understood.
The Jewish homeland couldn’t get replaced by a overseas substitute.
Is There a Palestine?
The query just isn’t whether or not many Arabs immediately determine as Palestinians. They do.
The actual query is whether or not that trendy political identification ought to erase older Jewish historical past, biblical reminiscence, Roman Judea, Eretz Israel and the trendy State of Israel.
Calling all Arabs whose ancestors lived beneath the British Mandate “Palestinians,” whereas excluding Jews whose ancestors additionally lived there, creates a political distortion.
It means that just one individuals belongs to the land.
That’s traditionally false.
The land carried many names throughout historical past: Canaan, Judea, Palaestina, the Holy Land, Palestine and Eretz Israel.
However the Jewish connection to the land didn’t start in 1948.
It didn’t start with the British Mandate.
It didn’t start with Herzl.
The Palestine identify historical past reveals how a Roman renaming turned a contemporary political weapon. The land known as Israel immediately stays the historic homeland of the Jewish individuals.
