The 1964 and 1968 PLO covenants reject Israel and partition, but neither uses the exact slogan “from the river to the sea.” Hamas’s 2017 document names the territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea and calls for its “full and complete liberation.” The surviving dated texts establish related territorial claims, not an earliest attestation of the exact modern chant.
What the PLO covenants say
The PLO was established in 1964, and its first National Covenant was proclaimed in Jerusalem on May 28 that year. It described the land as the homeland of the Arab people and called for its liberation. The 1964 covenant text contains no “river to sea” wording. In July 1968, the Palestine National Council adopted a revised charter. Article 2 defines Palestine by the boundaries of the British Mandate, and Article 9 calls armed struggle a strategy for liberation. The Yale transcription of the 1968 charter likewise contains no exact modern slogan. Its territorial scope is broad, but the wording should not be conflated with a later chant.
These documents support a careful distinction: a political organization can claim territory across the whole land without using the exact words later heard in protest slogans. The charters provide dated evidence of the PLO’s stated program in 1964 and 1968; they do not identify who first coined the phrase or when it first appeared in spoken protest.
Hamas’s 2017 territorial claim
Hamas’s 2017 Document of General Principles and Policies defines the land as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and invokes “full and complete liberation.” Article 20 says Hamas rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, while also describing a state on the June 4, 1967 lines as a formula of national consensus. These are Hamas’s stated positions in that document, issued more than five decades after the first PLO covenant. They show a documented use of the river-to-sea geography, not proof of the slogan’s first appearance.
The strongest conclusion from these records is chronological and specific: 1964 and 1968 PLO documents articulate broad territorial claims without the exact slogan; Hamas’s 2017 document explicitly uses the river-to-sea frame. The phrase’s exact earliest spoken or printed use is not identified by these texts. For how the phrase is used and heard today, see the central explainer.