What brought on cold feet at the pro-Palestine protest camp?

The temperature in Canberra fell to three degrees below zero on the day they backed down from their earlier defiant decision to stay and be arrested.

Some did move to a far less prominent place approved by the university but some seem to have left: the rally on the vacated lawn the next day had much smaller student numbers. It was bolstered by union activists.

But it can't just have been the cold.

There was clearly a splintering of factions - as is not unknown on the far left. People prominent in Socialist Alternative were at the front of previous protests, megaphones in hand. After the move, they were at the back of the march and quiet.

A core of protesters does remain in the less prominent location, as they do in campuses around the world - but some of the steam has also gone out of the protest.

The cold reality of an arrest and a criminal record may have persuaded some not to defy the police in a public service town where vetting for jobs is the rule. Certainly, some protesters were heard voicing those misgivings on Monday.

It wasn't like that for rebellious Jack Waterford.

The former editor of The Canberra Times and current columnist was arrested in the early '70s and remains proud of it. It is still a badge of honour, particularly, for his part in demonstrating against apartheid in South Africa, as symbolised by the visiting Springbok rugby side.

"We were the subject of some regular attention from police special branches," he said.

Vietnam and Aboriginal rights protests annoyed the authorities.

"Our occasional demonstrations or 'agit-prop'' sometimes resulted in arrests, court cases and public denunciations from the great and good."

His favourite denunciation was one minister's accusation that protesters were ''political bikies pack-raping democracy''.

And he remains "honoured" that ASIO had a file on him.

Two things have changed since those heady days of protest.

First, he thinks that full employment then made defiance less damaging to career prospects. The awkward squad wasn't worried about being blacklisted from jobs.

"But the second thing was that the ANU had a genuinely liberal attitude towards demonstrations," he said.

"And the police were only reluctantly involved then", though it is true that on May 21, 1979, the police arrested 190 students. Officers pursued them up University Avenue (though Mr Waterford admits, "I didn't witness it. I was in the cells.")

But, by and large, he felt, there was what he called "repressive tolerance". The police would allow demonstrations as long as disruption wasn't too great. "We'll give you two lanes as long as you leave one open" as he put it.

He remembers cooperation between demonstrators and police, like at the sit-down outside The Lodge.

He said police told the protesters that those who wanted to get arrested should sit in the front row. "If you want to raise a fist but don't want to get arrested, sit at the back left, and as we come towards you, just discretely withdraw," was the police advice.

He succeeded in seeing his ASIO file after lodging a freedom-of-information request.

"They had been tapping my telephone. What an honour - if what a bore for them! ASIO had three volumes of files on me," Mr Waterford said.

But, again, there was some common sense on the ground. Officers would greet him with "G'day, Jack" but he said they didn't believe he was receiving "Moscow gold".

And demonstrations gave the police good money in overtime.

"The coppers, by and large, were five or six years older than us. They were getting married and settling down so the amount of police overtime was useful."

There was some banter. "Jack, can you organise a few more demos," he remembers one saying, "I need some money for an extension."

"It wasn't a secret conspiracy. You might keep back a few details of your exact route but the thing was going to happen so there was no point in pissing off the coppers."

The authorities at the ANU took particular exception to the chanting of the slogan, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free".

Pro-Israel groups say it's anti-Semitic because it implies the "erasure" of the Jewish state which currently exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean sea.

Some Jewish ANU students were upset at the chant. They said they felt intimidated by it.

But one of the lead chanters rejected that argument.

"It goes without saying that anti-Semitism is abhorrent," lawyer Mussa Hijazi said before adding that the discomfort of Jewish students wasn't a reason to cease chanting the slogan.

"I've felt uncomfortable about a lot of things so I don't really care if you feel uncomfortable about something."

He was born to Palestinian parents in the old Canberra Hospital. The family then returned to Hebron, the ancient town in the area to the west of the Jordan occupied by Israel.

He spent his formative years, from the age of three to his mid-teens, witnessing the conflict. "I remember the tear gas. I remember the bullets. I remember the funerals," he said. The trouble persuaded the family to return to Australia - but he brought his anger with him.

He thinks the university's action against the camp was really about silencing pro-Palestinian protest. He feels it's part of a broader silencing. His nine-year-old son, he said, was told not to wear a Free Palestine tee-shirt in primary school. The lad used Free Palestine as a username on a computer and was, according to the father, told that this phrase was not acceptable.

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"The one thing that I want to highlight is the silencing of voices, particularly my son," Mr Hijazi said.

He said that he couldn't be intimidated into silence because he was a partner in his own law-firm, but others, like public servants, would be frightened of speaking out for fear of losing or not getting jobs.

Mr Hijazi wasn't worried about whether the Australian intelligence services had a file on him. "I don't know and I don't care," he said.

"The bigger issue is the silencing - the attempt to silence - pro-Palestinian voices."

If ASIO has a file on him, it's not saying ("obvs", as young people say).

But the writer of ASIO's history thinks its priorities these days lie elsewhere.

"We've seen a shift in focus a bit more towards right-wing extremism," John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the ANU, said.

This didn't mean that ASIO had forgotten about the Middle East, far from it, but, "the idea that ASIO has a file on these people is probably going too far.

"It's got other fish to fry. It would concern itself with student protest if there's an intent to cause harm or commit violence."

There was no known violent intent in the protests, so ASIO's attention may well have been minimal.

But potential employers of students might have been much more interested.

"Applicants will be asked on the application form about any relevant police records," public service rules in the ACT state. "Successful applicants who are new to the ACT public service are required to complete a national criminal history check."

And at the federal level: "Character clearances may be required to confirm whether a prospective employee is of suitable character to be engaged based on the agency's risk tolerance, for example a criminal history check."

That thought seems to have played more strongly in some students' minds as the hour of the police arrival neared.