From the River to the Sea. Let’s Talk About What’s In Between 

The PLO Was Founded to Liberate a Country That Never Existed.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in Cairo in 1964. Not in Jerusalem. Not in Hebron. In Cairo, at an Arab League summit convened at the initiative of Egypt’s president. Its first chairman, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, was born in Lebanon to a Turkish mother and had most recently served as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United Nations. The organization created to speak for the Palestinian people was built in Egypt, by the Arab League, chaired by a man who was Lebanese by birth and Saudi by employment.

Three years before the West Bank was even under Israeli administration. Three years before the grievance that’s now offered as the movement’s reason for being.

The PLO’s own founding charter, Article 24, stated explicitly that the organization made no territorial claim over the West Bank, which was then under Jordanian control, or Gaza, which was under Egyptian  control. The territories the movement now claims to be liberating were not part of its original demand. The point, stated plainly in the same charter, was the elimination of Israel. All of it. River to sea. Article 9 named the method: armed struggle was the only way to liberate Palestine. Not negotiation. Not coexistence. Armed struggle.