The “Free Palestine” Quiz

من النهر إلى البحر، فلسطين ستتحرر

Min al-nahr ila al-bahr, Filastin satatharrar: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The geography. The river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. The land between them is all of Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza: about 27,000 km², home to about 15 million people. The Golan Heights sits east of the river, so it isn't included.

Where it comes from

It became a Palestinian nationalist slogan in the 1960s, in the early years of the PLO. The PLO's 1968 Charter said that “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” That rules out any partition with a Jewish state. In 1988 and 1993 the PLO accepted UN Resolution 242 and recognized Israel, but the slogan stayed in use. A common Arabic variant ends “Filastin ʿarabiyya”, meaning “Palestine is Arab.”

Hamas made it central. Its 2017 policy document rejects “any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

The idea isn't only Palestinian. The 1977 platform of Israel's Likud party said that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” In January 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel must keep security control over all the territory west of the Jordan.

What people mean by it

• Many protesters say it's a call for Palestinians to live in freedom and equality throughout the land. That could mean one democratic state or an end to occupation, not harm to Jews.
• Many Israelis and Jews hear a call to end Israel as a Jewish state. The map requires it, Hamas uses the slogan, and there's no answer to what happens to the 7.5 million Jews living there. The ADL calls it antisemitic.
• Many who chant it haven't looked at the map. In a late-2023 survey of US college students, many who backed the slogan couldn't name the river or the sea.

How governments have treated it

Germany banned it as a Hamas slogan in November 2023. That same month, the US House censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib, citing in part her defense of the phrase. In April 2024 the House passed a resolution condemning it as antisemitic. In other countries, courts and police have split on whether it counts as protected political speech.

The intent behind the slogan is disputed, but the geography isn't. Switch on River to the Sea mode and the map shows no Israel left.

The name is about 3,000 years old. For almost all of that time it has been the name of a place, not a people or a state, and the area it covered has kept changing.

1. c. 1175 BCEThe Philistines. Egyptian records name a seafaring people, the Peleset, who settled on the southern coast around Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The Hebrew Bible calls them Pelishtim and their coastal land Peleshet. They are Goliath's people.
2. 604 BCEThe Babylonians conquered the Philistine cities. The Philistines disappeared as a distinct people, but their name stayed on the map.
3. c. 450 BCEThe Greek historian Herodotus wrote of Palaistinē, sometimes meaning just the coast and sometimes the wider region inland.
4. 135 CERome renames Judea. After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt, the last major Jewish uprising, Emperor Hadrian merged the province of Judaea into Syria Palaestina and rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina. Many historians see the renaming as an attempt to cut the Jewish connection to the land. Others note the name was already in use and call it an administrative change.
5. c. 400The Byzantine Empire divided the region into Palaestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia.
6. 630sThe Arab conquerors kept the name as Jund Filasṭīn, a military district with its capital at Ramla. Arabic has no “p” sound, so Palestine became Filasṭīn.
7. 1516–1917No province called Palestine. Under the Ottomans, the land was split among districts run from Jerusalem, Nablus, Acre, Beirut and Damascus. “Palestine” and Filasṭīn survived informally, and Europeans often called it the Holy Land. In 1911 an Arab newspaper named Filasṭīn was founded in Jaffa.
8. 1920–48British Mandate Palestine. For the first time in modern history, Palestine was an official territory with borders. Jews and Arabs living there were both “Palestinians,” with passports reading “Palestine.” Jewish institutions used the name too: The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post, and the Palestine Orchestra, now the Israel Philharmonic.
9. 1948–todayThe Jewish state named itself Israel, and “Palestinian” came to mean the Arab people of the land. Historians differ on when a distinct Palestinian national identity formed. Some trace it to the late Ottoman period, and others say it took shape after 1948 and 1967. Today about 150 countries recognize a State of Palestine.

So when someone says “Free Palestine,” which Palestine do they mean: the Philistine coast, Hadrian's province, the British Mandate, or the West Bank and Gaza? That's the question this map asks.