‘It may take us 100 years … we will liberate Palestine’

Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

“AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — An Arab guerrilla in a camouflage uniform scratched at the rubble of a wrecked army depot Friday, then raised his head. His look was sullen and vengeful. ‘It may take us 100 years,’ he said, ‘but we will liberate Palestine.’

The charred ruins at Shuneh, two miles from the Jordan River frontier with Israel, were typical of others, blackened and desolate, along the route of Thursday’s 15-hour Israeli air, tank, and ground assault. Rocket casings, some bearing the U.S. handclasp of friendship, littered the roads where jets had strafed.

Many were marked ‘Saudi Arabia’ — presumably American aid passed on to Egypt and captured by the Israelis in last June’s Middle East war… Karameh, the refugee camp three miles east of the Jordan that the Israelis said was the El Fatah command post, was a dust bowl of demolished huts.

Dynamite charges had blown apart a movie theater and mixed with the rubble were strips of torn film… Western newsmen who watched them were accosted by armed civilians, describing themselves as local defense volunteers. They clicked the bolts of their rifles and were calmed only after the newsmen’s cameras were surrendered.

Out of 42 Israeli tanks and halftracks reported destroyed by the Jordanians, the newsmen saw only two Korean War-vintage Centurion tanks knocked out at Shuneh… Israel claimed it had killed 150 El Fatah guerrillas, but a spokesman for it and two other guerrilla organizations said their losses were ‘very little’ compared to the Israelis, who acknowledged the loss of 30 men.”

Context added by this archive

A Palestinian’s sentence given the whole headline in a Michigan daily in 1968, four years after the PLO was founded and nineteen before the first intifada. The rest of the column is a reporter checking numbers against what he can see with his own eyes. The Jordanians reported 42 Israeli tanks destroyed; the newsmen counted two.

Israel claimed 150 guerrillas killed; the guerrillas said their losses were very little. And the cameras did not survive the trip — armed men worked the bolts of their rifles and were calmed only when the newsmen handed the cameras over.

Cite this item

"‘It may take us 100 years … we will liberate Palestine’," Niles Daily Star, 23 March 1968. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1968-006. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1968-006