The 1964 and 1968 PLO covenants reject Israel’s establishment and deny Jewish national ties, but neither contains the exact phrase “from the river to the sea.” Hamas’s 2017 document does name the territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea and says Hamas rejects any alternative to its full liberation. Read the wording and dates carefully: they are not interchangeable texts.
The 1964 and 1968 PLO covenants
The founding covenant adopted in 1964 called the 1947 partition and Israel’s establishment “illegal and false.” Article 18 rejected Jewish historic and spiritual ties and denied that Jews constituted a people with an independent national identity. Article 24 said the PLO did not exercise regional sovereignty over the areas then governed by Jordan and Egypt. The Oxford-hosted 1964 text records those provisions.
The 1968 covenant defined Palestine by the borders of the British Mandate, called the territory indivisible, rejected partition, and described armed struggle as a strategy. Article 19 says Israel’s establishment and the partition were illegal; Article 9 describes armed struggle as a strategy, not a sentence stating that diplomacy is impossible. The Yale Avalon Project transcription lets readers check each article. Neither covenant contains the exact modern slogan; the University of Toronto history primer distinguishes the words from the broader political positions.
Hamas’s 1988 charter and 2017 document
Hamas’s 1988 charter presents the struggle in religious terms and quotes a call for Israel’s abolition. In 2017, Hamas issued a 42-point political document without formally replacing the 1988 charter. Its Article 2 defines the land as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean; Article 20 rejects any alternative to “full and complete liberation” of that land, while describing a state on the June 4, 1967 lines as a formula of national consensus. The Wilson Center’s full-text reproduction includes the document and notes its provisional acceptance language.
The distinction is plain: the PLO charters contain explicit rejection of Israel but not this slogan; Hamas’s later document couples the territorial phrase with a claim to the whole land. These texts explain why Israelis scrutinize the chant’s organizational context. For its broader range of uses, see the meaning explainer.