In June 1967, the State of Israel launched a new war by unleashing a surprise attack against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai and the Golan Heights. More than 300,000 Palestinians became exiles, one-third of whom were refugees of 1948. A brutal repression unions and military training. The fate of the Palestinian people was ignored by the international community; the Palestinian organizations brought their struggle to the international scene with three objectives: to remind the world of the Palestinian people’s existence by spectacular actions (hi-jacking planes and hostage taking), to rally progressive forces and to threaten the State of Israel’s interests wherever they existed.

Palestinian militant Leila Khaled, insisted: “He (my oppressor) is not in a position to make an impartial judgment (…) inasmuch as it is he who stole my house, and drove my people and me out of our land. I feel absolutely no obligation to listen to someone who defines morality and legality on his own terms and who, because he has the power and the means to justify his inhuman conduct, decides to impose his conception of law and ethics (…). On the other hand, if I feel morally obliged to do something, it is to resist and fight to the death against the moral corruption of this enemy.” The repression of these resistance movements came to a head in Jordan in 1970.

The American “peace” plan, called the Rogers Plan, which called for a cease-fire, also laid the ground for crushing Palestinian resistance, which had become too pre-eminent in Amman. King Hussein of Jordan used it to kill thousands, mainly Palestinians, in September 1970 (Black September), then in 1971 attacked the last Palestinian guerrilla strongholds in the Ajloun mountains. The United States, but also the Israeli army, threatened to retaliate should any progressive Arab government dare to intervene in favour of the Palestinians. Defeated, the resistance movement moved to Lebanon, the last remaining front outside Palestine.