National Content: Italy

The years between 1967 and 1973 are defined by the historians as the “years of non-peace and the years of non-war”, years made up of continuous broken truces and accidents at the borders between Israel and the Palestine territories. In 1968 Yasser Arafat becomes President of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine. As an immediate political consequence he refuses to accept the resolution number 242 of the United Nations, signed in November 1967, where the “Security Counsel, expressing its deep preoccupation for the Middle East, stresses the inadmissible acquisition of territories through war and the need to work for a just and long lasting peace in which each country enjoys safety”. The Palestinians turn to terrorism which culminated with the attack at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. On September 5th of that year eight militants of the “Black September”, at night, broke into the residences of the Israeli team, killing the all-in wresting trainer, Moshe Weinberg, the heavy weight champion Yossef Romano and taking nine hostages. Such political group, part of Al-Fatah, a majority wing in the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (OLP) had formed itself as the armed force of the movement following the anti-Palestinian repressions in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The events in Munich signified a turn in the Palestinian terrorist strategy which became international from that point on.