1968 Read Online Free PDF

protested against the regime. This in turn led hundreds of medical students to demonstrate the following day, angrily throwing rocks at police. By mid-January, the government had closed the Schools of Philosophy and Letters, Economics, and Political Science because of anti-Franco demonstrations. Having won the right to student organizations in 1967, the 1968 students were demanding that the student leaders imprisoned after the 1967 demonstrations be released and that the government agree never again to allow police to invade the sanctity of university campuses, a historic principle recognized in most of Europe. But students were also becoming more politically involved in noncampus issues, especially issues of trade unions and worker rights.
    On New Year’s Eve, Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban urged the Arabs of the Middle East to “assert their will” and demand that their leaders negotiate a peace with Israel. In June 1967 Israel had gone to war with its Arab neighbors yet again. De Gaulle was furious because, as a close ally of Israel and a supplier of Israeli weapons, he had demanded that Israel not go to war unless attacked. But the state of Israel had already suffered attacks by the Arabs on several occasions since its creation, and once the Egyptians blocked the Gulf of Aqaba, the Israelis became convinced that another coordinated attack by the Arabs was about to be launched. So they attacked first. De Gaulle reversed French policy from pro-Israel to pro-Arab. Explaining this new policy at a November press conference, the General referred to Jews as “an elite people, self-assured and domineering.” In 1968 de Gaulle was still trying to explain the statement and assure various Jewish leaders that it was not an anti-Semitic remark. He insisted that it was a compliment, and he may have thought it was, since the adjectives so perfectly described himself.
    The Soviet Union, another former ally of Israel until 1956, also was upset. It had armed the Arabs and supplied their battle plans and was embarrassed to see Israel defeat Soviet-backed Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in only six days.
    The Israelis had tried something different. In this war they confiscated land—the green Golan Heights from Syria, the rock-bound Sinai from Egypt, and the West Bank of the Jordan River, including the Arab-held sector of Jerusalem, from Jordan. Then they tried to negotiate with the Arabs, telling them that they would give back the land in exchange for peace. But to their complete frustration, the Arabs showed no interest in the offer. So on New Year’s Eve, Abba Eban delivered a radio message in Arabic stating, “The policy adopted by your leaders for the last twenty years is bankrupt. It brought continuous catastrophe upon all the people of the region.” 1968, he insisted, should be the time for a change in Arab policy.
    In the meantime, the Israeli government appropriated 838 acres from the former Jordanian sector of Jerusalem to establish a Jewish settlement in the Old City. Fourteen hundred housing units were planned, including four hundred for Arabs who were removed from the Old City.
    Like the words
black
and
Yippie!, Palestinian
first entered the popular vocabulary in 1968. Previously, there had not been a separate cultural identity for these people, who had not been thought of as a distinct nationality, and the usual phrase for Arabs living in Israel had been just that, “Arabs in Israel.” It was less clear what an Arab in the West Bank of the Jordan River was since this area was thought of as Jordan, and hence Arabs there, culturally identical to those on the other bank of the Jordan, were thought of as Jordanians. When an American newspaper reported from the West Bank, the dateline read “Israeli-occupied Jordan.”
    At the beginning of 1968, the word
Palestinian
was generally used to refer to members of Arab guerrilla units, which were also frequently referred to in the Western press as terrorist organizations. These