The General Union of Palestinian Students (Arabic: إتحاد الطلاب الفلسطينين العام) (GUPS) is an organization run by Palestinian students since the early 1920s. It is generally considered one of the first Palestinian institutions started. It was officially launched in Cairo in 1959.
Several Palestinian politicians, writers, journalists and militants have been members or leaders of the GUPS. They include Yasser Arafat, Hanan Ashrawi, Faisal Husseini, Walid Khalidi and many others.
The organization is a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.
Famous quotes containing the words general, union, palestinian and/or students:
“There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved, by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
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“I have told my husband that if he denies women equality, I will be in the vanguard of women on the streets, protesting outside his office in the new Palestinian state.”
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“Separatism of any kind promotes marginalization of those unwilling to grapple with the whole body of knowledge and creative works available to others. This is true of black students who do not want to read works by white writers, of female students of any race who do not want to read books by men, and of white students who only want to read works by white writers.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)