Global News Podcast - Bonus: The Global Story - The most contested land in the world?

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

This is a bonus episode from The Global Story - taking a look at a much-debated slogan, and a journey through the land that it refers to; from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean sea. Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last year, the cry “From the River to the Sea” has been heard more and more as a pro-Palestinian slogan. But what river? What sea? And what exactly does the phrase mean? It is the subject of intense controversy. BBC Current Affairs journalist Tim Whewell joins our presenter Lucy Hockings to discuss his journey from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, across a tiny stretch of land - that is perhaps the most argued-over in the world. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC World Service. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you got this podcast.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Oliver Conway, and I'm here to introduce you to our sibling podcast, The Global Story. Here's Lucy Hockings. We're taking a journey from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean, across the West Bank

and Israel. It's a much contested stretch of land. What do the people living there, Israeli or Palestinian, want? I wish my kid could not go through the same hell that I've been through, and that's really the dream. As peace for the region hangs in the balance, we ask what hopes they have for their future. With me today is BBC current affairs reporter Tim Huell, who has recently returned from the region, where Tim, you've been interviewing lots of locals that we hardly ever hear from, so good to have you with us. Hi Tim. Hi Lucia, nice to be here. A very, very wide range of people, certainly not just in terms of Palestinians and Israelis, but simply in terms of jobs, of backgrounds, really, you know,

a huge gamut of different people. So before we really delve into it, what drew you to this area in the first place? Why did you want to look into this? Well, I think partly, obviously, everybody's attention is even more closely focused now that the Gaza war's on. And I just got very interested in this slogan, from the river to the sea. A lot of us didn't know it before. Obviously, it's been shouted very loudly. You see it everywhere now.

You do really, really see it everywhere. Because, of course, I mean, obviously, we've got to say at the beginning, it's principally understood and used as a pro-Palestinian slogan. Although we'll come into that in more detail because it turns out it's used in some other contexts as well. But as you say, used everywhere in protests against the war. But when surveys are done of the people using it, the people chanting it, a surprisingly high proportion don't actually know which river and which sea, you know, asked which river. Some say the Nile, some say the Euphrates, asked which sea, some say the Dead Sea. So, you know, merely to emphasise, we're talking about the River Jordan, we're talking about the Mediterranean. And what really interested me

is how small the distances are. I just really wanted to get, if you like, into the kind of physicality of this. You know, a river, a sea, they're very physical things. And between them is only 90 kilometres, like 50 odd miles. And Tim, what is that 90 kilometres like between the river and the sea? What does it look like? How does it feel? What does it smell like? Well, the first incredible thing to say is that not only is it a very, very short distance, if you take the most direct line between the river and the sea, but it goes right up and it goes right down again. Because talking about the River

Jordan, the Jordan Valley, it's part of the Great Rift Valley. So at the bottom end of the Jordan is the lowest place on earth. So you're talking 400 metres below sea level. Within just a few miles, you're going up to 700 metres above, like dizzying ascents in this really narrow strip, and then down again to the coast. And first of all, you're crossing the West Bank, in other words, territory occupied by Israel. Then you're crossing Israel, the coastal strip of Israel, before you get to the sea.

And within that, everything is just so jumbled up. So, you know, often people set out, of course, to get the Israeli perspective on something, the Palestinian perspective on something, the Palestinian perspective on something. But if you actually make a journey, if you like, go on a straight east-west line from the river to the sea, it's not like you have to achieve balance by setting out to visit these people or those people, because on this line, you will literally pass Palestinian village, followed by Israeli settlement, followed by Palestinian village, like kind of, you know, different alternate beads in a necklace.

And in terms of the geography, I think when many people think of that area, they just in their mind's eye see images of conflict. But in terms of the geography, is it beautiful? It's incredibly beautiful. And it's a very overused word, of course, to say biblical. But actually, if you imagine all these hills then, and obviously agriculture. We're protecting here an amazing variety of wildlife, gazelles, wolves, boars and hyenas, lots of songbirds. And because of the hills, the agricultural has to be on terraces, dry stone wall terraces.

So lots and lots of those have olive trees on, for example. So most villages and settlements actually now crown hilltops. So in the case of Palestinian villages, probably there'll be a mosque on the very crest of the hill. So yes, in many ways, it's a charming landscape, but ever, ever more crowded. And of course, the physical crowding, certainly Palestinians would argue in terms of the growth and growth of Israeli settlements, is if you like part of a plan, is a part of a plan as they would see it like to surround them. Tim, you've already mentioned that it has been used in recent weeks and months by pro-Palestinian activists, particularly around the world. But it's not only a phrase that's important to them. What about the Israeli right-wingers? What do they think of this phrase? How do they use it?

Well, that's right. So as used by Palestinians and pro-Palestinian people, it means effectively, and certainly they would use this word, a return to the single state that existed. Well, immediately before that, of course, it was a British mandate up to 1948 when Israel was created. So therefore, a single state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, which and then we come into another big issue, whether that would then be shared by all the existing people who are currently there, which is about 14 million people, if you take together the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, Arabs and Israelis, Arabs and Jews, or whether you actually then start saying,

when the thing obviously becomes even more controversial still, that some of the people who've arrived since, which some Palestinians would simply mean Jews, should leave. So even within the issue of a single state, from a Palestinian perspective, there's that difference. But then, as you say, on the other side, actually, there are Israelis, and I'm talking particularly now right wing Israelis, who also believe that there should be one state Israeli sovereignty all the way between the river and the sea.

So there is actually a huge amount of misunderstanding about what the phrase actually means. Well, and this is where it really gets interesting, because on this journey, I met a lot of people who were in favour of both on the Jewish side and on the Palestinian side who said, yes, we want one state. And then I always asked the following question, and what would that state be called? And so, of course, the Israelis say it would be called the State of Israel. The Palestinians say it would be called Palestine. And then, of course, we come straight back to the demography. People on both sides, to be honest, some people are very frightened of the idea of a single state, because only one side or the other can be in charge of that. Tim, how was the travel in terms of your logistics?

Because it's not a very large area, as you mentioned, but it's incredibly complicated and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to sort out car journeys and handovers of cars and just how you actually did this. Well, I have to say, to really begin with, incredibly stupidly, I had this idea that I would walk from the river to the sea, which, again, to come back to distances,

would only have taken me, well, 50-odd miles. You know, I'm quite a good walker, I've got good boots. I actually could have done it in three days. A bit stressful, but of course, you know, when I realised, I was being naive when I realised the security situation on the West Bank, people don't any longer go walking. It just isn't safe. I would consider putting on personal protection gear. For the protest?

Yeah, just in case, because there's been a few terror incidents, shooting at cars, stone throwing. By car, actually, you could do it in less than an hour and a half. I took more than a week, because, of course do it in less than an hour and a half. I took more than a week because, of course, I wanted to talk to people. I zigzagged a bit. But as you say, the conception is very simple. Logistically, it's incredibly complicated because the whole system of roads on the West Bank, for example,

effectively there are roads. This isn't a formal thing, but in terms of who gets checked on roads, who doesn't get checked, whether it's safe on particular roads, not safe on particular roads, you know, there are roads where it's safer for Palestinians to be on, there are roads where it's safer and easier for Israelis to be on. And, you know, there's a huge question, what checkpoints can you go through, even in kind of in which direction and so on, according, for example, to whether you're in an Israeli license plate car, or a Palestinian registered car. And equally, of course, Palestinians can't be in Israeli settlements, Israelis can't easily be in Palestinian villages.

So I had this handover, this kind of swap system, at least once every day. So I had a series of Palestinian guides, I had an Israeli guide, and at least once a day at a kind of agreed swap over point. And, you know, it's quite difficult to find safe rendezvous locations as well. I mean, you can't just stop by the side of any road, it just wouldn't be safe. But we worked all those out. And I kind of handed over, back and forth. Now we exit from the Jordan Valley. I'm moving on with Palestinian Rashid Safate. The name of the checkpoint, it's Ma'aleh Fribe.

So we just went through a checkpoint just now. Yeah, the soldiers, the stovas, and we don't mention Doma, village where we are going, because there's a lot of activity in Doma. But I'm worried now, you know, and I hope on my way back there will be no soldiers. So I could, you know, go to Israeli places, settlements with an Israeli, and go to Palestinian villages with a Palestinian. How did you make those decisions, Tim, about where to stop, where to go, who to speak to? Well, it's complicated, and of course, you know, the BBC has high risk advisors, you know, people who know a huge amount in detail on the ground about the security situation. And of course, I took a lot, a lot of local advice. But you kind of think of the kind of places where normally if you were in a normal place, you'd kind of do things like that. You know, for example, in the very centre of the northern West Bank,

you know, there's a crossroads and right next to it, there's a petrol station and behind the petrol station, there's a very good fast food restaurant, a hummus joint. You'd think, what a great place for a handover, you know, but actually at that petrol station and hummus place, six Israelis have been killed, you know, simply sprayed with bullets in the last two years. Well, in the end,

we didn't hand over there, but we did stop there. In fact, we had some hummus there, but, you know, you're living on the edge to some degree. You're not telling me this is the famous hummus place where people got shot? Yes. What was... Bad Omen? Yeah, this place was hit twice by Palestinian gunmen.

And the people going in, I can see. They're religious settlers, or as they call them, national religious. I mean, here at the BBC, we just take this so seriously, the idea of balance, that you wanted to hear from both communities. How did you make those decisions? Well, simply by going in a straight line, the range of people you met, to some degree, defines itself. It actually becomes, because of everybody being so jumbled up, you know, I did end up going effectively to a Palestinian place, followed by an Israeli settlement and so on.

But of course, I did, to some degree, seek out stories. It's true. So that kind of took me a little bit off my route. So I was very keen, for example, to spend a night, which was just an extraordinary experience, with a Palestinian shepherding community. And I just partly wanted to document, well, let's call them sheep wars, which is really an extraordinary development on the West Bank over the last few years, where Israeli settlers have gradually acquired more and more herds or flocks

of animals. And certainly from a Palestinian perspective, they're effectively trying, if you like, to use those animals to establish more grazing rights, which, if you like, then is to kind of extend the territory of Israeli settlements, therefore kind of to extend Israeli control over wider parts of the West Bank. So there was this collection of very, very rough tents, really, shelters where about 12 Palestinian herding families live. And in fact, there was no trouble the night we were there. But, you know, they said that quite often they get harassed in the middle of the night by settlers. I mean, really extraordinary things where settlers come down with tractors.

They suddenly announce they're going to plant something, plough the land in the middle of the night. But all these obviously are accompanied by threats and these are forms of harassment. The first thing, like one night settlers came with the goats and his sheep and even later they was came with the goats and his sheep. And even later, they were coming with the Israeli military and the soldiers, they asked him to leave. They are not allowed to be there. They come one time to try to grow the wheat. To plough the land?

Yeah. And Abu Khairi, he just slipped, you know, in front of the tractor. You lay down in front of the tractor? Uh-uh. Weren't you scared? No, I wanted him to kill me. He's not scared. He said, I will die just one time.

On the other side, you know, what the settlers would say is, we've got to really stress, we are talking about occupied land that's generally regarded by the international community, believes that the settlements are against international law. But talking now from the settler's perspective, they say that many of these Palestinian encampments, if you like, shepherding encampments, have no right to be there. And all this goes back to Oslo Accords in the mid-90s. They were obviously

at the time a legal agreement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, which was agreed by both sides. So we've looked at the meanings behind the much-repeated phrase, from the river to the sea. We've learned more about what the area is like. Next, I want to look at the spectrum of opinions that Tim heard from those living there and whether they believe a peaceful future is possible. Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. You're travelling from the river to the sea after October the 7th, obviously, with the conflict still raging in Gaza.

What did people tell you about how they were feeling, whether they'd been able to in any way move on from that day? You're absolutely right, and October the 7th dominates everything, everybody. Obviously, I didn't go through Gaza. Gaza is kind of south, if you like, everybody. Obviously, I didn't go through Gaza. Gaza is kind of south, if you like, of my route, because it is actually south of where the River Jordan finally ends in the Dead Sea. But yes, everybody is in the shadow of October the 7th. But I think the first thing we should say is, though, that everybody talks of October the 7th, everyone uses that phrase, but even by it, people mean different things. So when Israelis say October the 7th, they mean simply the horror of that day, that Saturday,

last October, when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups burst into Israel. 1,200 Israelis were killed, and they're still really focused really on the horrors of that day. When Palestinians say October 7th, they're basically using it as a shorthand for everything that started after that day. Therefore, they're principally, to be honest, talking about the Gaza war and all the suffering and deaths that there have been in Gaza since then. And actually, the events of

October the 7th themselves as a day, it seemed to me very, very much that a lot of Palestinians downplay that. And to them, it's just one more date in a really long sequence of dates going back over decades. And to Israelis, by contrast, it's something totally, totally different. And we know, of course, that Israelis basically, this has been said a lot on how Israelis frame it, the largest single loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Israel is reliving October the 7th every single day through the media, which goes back to October 7th every single day. You are constantly exposed to what happened on October the 7th from a million different vantage points.

We're still there. I mean, I've spoken to Israelis who say they still wake up every morning and it is the first thing that they think of. They cannot move on from that day. Well, that's absolutely right. And the second half of my journey, you know, I left the West Bank and was across Israel and person after person said to me exactly that.

We haven't moved on. We simply can't move on. This was so overwhelming. You know, so many people were touched. Israel's a small country. Almost everybody knows somebody who was killed directly or indirectly, not many degrees of separation, someone who was taken hostage. It's extraordinarily close to everyone.

And I think one of the most really fascinating meetings that I had, this was somebody I particularly sought out, or two people actually, their teachers, husband and wife teachers. I wanted to meet them because there's a very unusual subject that's taught in Israeli schools, which in Hebrew is called Shelach, which is short for field, nation and society. And it's about kind of, the idea is,

if you know your country, physically know your country, if you like, because there's a lot of walking involved, you take responsibility for your country, and it's a subject about teaching values. So this teacher himself had been in Gaza as a reservist, and he came back, got a hero's welcome at his school, then of course started teaching his students about values as he believed he had shown, you know, with the Israel Defence

Forces in Gaza. So he talked, for example, he met hardly any civilians because they'd all been evacuated to places they were told were safer. So in terms of actual meeting Palestinians, basically clearing houses. He hardly met any Palestinians, actually. And the two he did meet were both disabled people who hadn't been able to flee. And he described how he'd really tried to help them in a human way. And that was quite a moving story.

But, you know, I said to him, as I think anybody coming from outside Israel would say, but, you know, hang on a minute, you're teaching values or discussing values in school to students around the subject of the Gaza war. You must mention at some point, it must arise the subject of how many children, thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza. I think the situation in the beginning of the war was we were afraid. There wasn't any one family around me that didn't know anyone that killed or kidnapped or murdered. We're talking about values and so on.

I mean, in the outside world, people are saying thousands of children have died in Gaza. And I'm just interested in whether that's being talked about, for example, in the lessons that you have. I think it's too early. It's too early. We're still wondering, we're still trying to understand what happened there on the 7th of October. We have lots of people that's not in their houses anymore.

We have people in people that's not in their houses anymore. We have people in Gaza that hostage. I think that Israel is still thinking about herself. So if you're asking us to now be on the other side, I'm not sure we are. I think it's too early. When you say that the degrees of separation are small in Israel, we are now talking about almost 40,000 people killed, Palestinians killed, 90,000 wounded. So the same could be said. I suppose you had those conversations too. Everyone knows someone or knows a family who has been affected in Gaza by this from the Palestinian side.

No, I mean, of course that's true. I mean, obviously the West Bank and Gaza, they're very close to one another. They're not physically linked. Some people in the West Bank, of course, yes, absolutely, have relatives in Gaza. Some don't. But I think as Palestinians, certainly, I think obviously they all share that pain. And, you know, also I think it's really important to say that on either side, what people are seeing, particularly what people are seeing on television screens, what people are seeing on social media is completely

different. So do people talk to you about the future? Or did it feel that everyone is so stuck in this moment, this experience that they couldn't look ahead? I think, you know, my overwhelming feeling is October the 7th on both sides has reinforced people very strongly in the attitudes they already had. And, you know, I also think that, you know, if we talk now more about Israel,

you know, that among liberal Israelis, people very much who did believe in the future in a two-state solution, believed in the creation of a Palestinian state to be alongside Israel, I roughly translates as sobering up, meaning that some people who had those kind of liberal views since October the 7th, no longer have them. It's interesting, because when you listen to foreign diplomats or heads of state, firstly, they talk about a ceasefire, and then they will also talk about a two state solution. But we saw the Knesset overwhelmingly passing this motion now, rejecting the two-state solution. Do you hear ordinary people talk about it? On your journey, was anyone mentioning that? I mean, the feeling about the future is what?

My feeling was, you know, and even before this Knesset vote, you know, this vote in Israel's parliament. My feeling was a two-state solution, if you like, is still the preferred solution of, with exceptions, but put it together, of the international community. It's what most diplomatic efforts, you know, for decades already have been focused on. You know, on the ground, it does seem to me that fewer and fewer people on either side believe in it. So, Tim, as you travelled from the river to the sea and spoke to so many different people from different generations, did any kind of unifying theme emerge at all?

Well, you know, it isn't easy to see hope in this. It's easy now to see how polarization will increase. But I think, in a way, the only ray of hope that you can see is just that the extremity of the situation now will concentrate minds. And while some people, as I say, you know, on the Israeli side, certainly, obviously, this comes down to whether you have means or not, you know, said to me, we do not want to bring up our children in this situation. We are simply going to leave the country. You know, there were others who said, this proves all the more we have to find a solution. And the young people on the beach, including one who had been in Gaza, obviously fighting for

Israeli forces, had been wounded himself, quite badly wounded. And he said, my grandfather fought in Israel's wars, my father fought, I've ended up fighting. I am absolutely determined. You know, he said, I'm staying here, I'm not leaving, but I'm absolutely determined. He's still young, doesn't have a family yet, but when I have a family, my child will not fight. It truly annoys me, really. The reason humans are better than every other animal is because we learn from generation to generation. My grandfather came from Yemen.

From Yemen? He didn't know what a tab was. No running water? Yeah, and now I'm here with my iPhone, with Siri, with the smartphone, with everything, basically, and I'm still fighting the same war on the same land. And it's annoying. And I wish my kid could not go through the same hell

that I've been through. And that's really the dream. And I think that kind of determination, which must in the end be a determination to find a solution, I think that's one of the maybe few rays of hope that you can see. Tim, thank you. Thank you, Lucy. And thanks so much to you for listening.

There's a fresh episode available as a podcast each weekday. Just search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to hear the two-part documentary, A Slogan and a Land, search The Documentary wherever you found this podcast. That's it for now. We'll have another episode of the Global News Podcast very soon. Thank you.