The 1967 War and the Forging of Political Community

Abstract

This chapter investigates the influence of the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors on Muslim–Jewish relations in France. This conflict, which ended with Israel's occupation of significant Arab lands including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, had little impact on daily interactions more fundamentally shaped by the colonial North African past and the French present than the Middle East. Nevertheless, the unprecedented mobilization of Jewish organizational life around Israel and efforts to create parallel affinities in the Muslim North African population around Palestine continued to shape political discourse in binary terms. The result was that while conflict between France's large Muslim and Jewish populations was rare, the story of two polarized ethno-religious political units hardened as new political actors, particularly university students, began to use French campuses as spaces in which to engage in discussions of foreign policy.