George Habash

Israeli-born Arab nationalist leader

• Born: August 2, 1925?
• Birthplace: Lydda, Palestine (now Lod, Israel)
• Died: January 26, 2008
• Place of death: Amman, Jordan

While focusing worldwide attention on issues relating to Palestinians in Israel, Habash also forced the international community to confront terrorism as an avowed and explicitly adopted operational strategy. He founded the Arab nationalist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Early Life

George Habash (hah-BAHSH) was born to a family of affluent merchants who belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church. When Israel’s War of Independence broke out in 1948, he was a medical student at the American University of Beirut. He returned to his hometown of Lydda, later resuming and completing his medical studies at the university. While there, he teamed up with a Syrian student named Hani al-Hindi to work with a group of Damascus-based Egyptian terrorists who were attacking Western institutions in Syria and Lebanon. This group evolved in 1951 into the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), a militant pan-Arabist organization dedicated to eliminating Zionism and creating one united Arab state that would extend from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. The ANM strongly supported then-Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Habash later became a pediatrician and opened a school for Palestinian children in Amman, Jordan. He also continued his political activities and served time in prison. After going underground and being convicted in absentia for an unsuccessful coup attempt in Jordan in 1957, Habash fled to Syria. Syria had formed a brief union with Egypt (the United Arab Republic) but when the union dissolved in 1961, Habash was expelled from Syria because of his support for Nasser. He returned to Beirut, and in 1964 took charge of a newly organized version of the Arab Nationalist Movement called the National Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A military branch of this organization, called the Vengeance Youth, started attacks on Israeli targets in November, 1964.

Life’s Work

Habash is noted primarily for his founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967, which was his response to the Arab loss of the Six-Day War with Israel that year. From the time of its founding manifesto, this organization openly embraced violence and terrorism as a means to attain its objectives. These objectives included the violent return (and destruction, if necessary) to Arab hands of territories captured by Israel during the Six-Day War. Habash rejected diplomacy as a workable option with the Israelis, claiming that the conflict with Israel would not have existed if there had been diplomatic options available to resolve differences.

Even amid considerable internal turmoil and fractious relationships with other Arab terrorist groups, Habash and his PFLP associates managed to carry out their intended terrorist agenda in a way that claimed large-scale world attention. The first of these actions was the 1968 hijacking to Algiers of an EL AL airliner (Israel’s national airline) traveling over Italian airspace. Algerian negotiators arranged for the release of the non-Israeli hostages and Israeli women and children. After Israeli negotiators succeeded in getting the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations to threaten an Algerian boycott, the remaining Israelis were released. In return, Israel released sixteen Arab prisoners singled out by Habash’s organization. After the hijacking, EL AL sharply tightened its security procedures.

After the PFLP hijacked another Israeli airplane in Athens, Israel responded by destroying thirteen Arab planes in Beirut. Starting in 1969, Western planes, including American aircraft, had become the new PFLP targets. Habash and his associates soon realized, however, that EL AL’s security procedures were nearly impenetrable, as the Israeli government made it clear that it would not release Arab prisoners in response to hijackings. The terrorist agenda therefore shifted focus to Western governments that were considered “pro-Israel.” The PFLP agenda made sense to the group because many of the governments in support of Israel were willing to release PLFP prisoners held in European prisons. The actions of the PLFP drew attention and admiration from other European terrorist groups, including the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy, which soon formed alliances with Habash and the PLFP.

The most prominent PFLP terrorist act was the concerted hijackings of Black September. The PFLP attempted to simultaneously hijack four airliners of different international carriers on September 6, 1970. The attack on one of these planes, an EL AL aircraft, was foiled when the pilot took a deliberate dive and the hijackers were overpowered by guards dressed as civilians. The plane landed in London with one dead hijacker and another detained. An American plane was hijacked from Amsterdam to Cairo and blown up after its passengers were released. Other aircraft were hijacked and forced to fly to Jordan.

The hijackings led to international negotiations for the release of imprisoned PFLP members. However, on September 12, the PFLP blew up the three airplanes after releasing the passengers. Jordan’s King Hussein strongly disapproved of the use of the Jordanian airstrip by terrorists and promptly launched what came to be called the Black September campaign to expel all Palestinian guerrillas from Jordan. Three thousand Palestinians died in this campaign, and several refugee camps in Jordan were destroyed by the Jordanians themselves. Habash set up operations in southern Lebanon and continued to direct terrorist incidents, mostly in Europe. In one high-profile joint effort with the Japanese Red Army, a terrorist group, in May, 1972, twenty-six people were killed at Israel’s main airport.

Habash came to realize that the international terrorist acts would not help gain world sympathy for the Palestinian cause. He decided to limit his targets to those within Israel, southern Lebanon, and Jordan. Habash opposed the 1978 Camp David Accords because the agreements envisioned a peaceful Arab-Israeli coexistence, which was contrary to the vision of pan-Arab unity. Pan-Arab unity was valued by Habash and his associates as a major boost to the Palestinians.

In 1979, a stroke kept Habash in bed to recuperate for several months, and he remained partially paralyzed for the remainder of his life. He was able to resume control of the PFLP the next year and did not resign as its leader until 2000. He directed the PFLP’s violent efforts during the First Intifada against Israel (1987), which included car bombings and assassinations. Habash also spoke out against the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and aligned himself and the PFLP with other terrorist groups (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad) to counter the terms of the accords. He believed that Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat’s signature on these agreements shattered Arab unity and destroyed attempts to highlight the Palestinian situation as the center of the conflict with Israel. After he stepped down from the PFLP leadership, he continued to carry out research projects under PFLP auspices and to participate in the organization’s political activities.

Another stroke in 1992 had left Habash nearly incapacitated, but he worked from his office in Syria. He suffered a fatal heart attack in a hospital in Amman on January 26, 2008. He was believed to be eighty-two years old.

Significance

Habash consistently exhibited a dual persona. On one hand, he had a major role in promoting pan-Arab unity and in refusing to compromise with Israel in its determination to exist as a neighbor state. On the other hand, Habash and the PFLP’s rejections of Israel led to large-scale terrorist actions on domestic and international fronts. Terrorism ultimately weakened the group’s cause.

Bibliography

Alexander, Yonah. Palestinian Secular Terrorism: Profiles of Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational, 2003. The title of this important work describes the major focus of the book. A rich, detailed history of the organizations. Includes bibliographical references.

Beinin, Joel, and Lisa Hajjar. “Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.” Washington, D.C.: Middle East Research and Information Project, n.d. An online publication that provides an introduction to the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. Highly recommended. Available at http://merip.org. Click on “Special Publications.”

Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organization. New York: Cambridge University Press,1984. Detailed scholarly account of the development and interactions among the Arab terrorist organizations, including the PFLP. Includes chapter notes and a bibliography listing books, series, and articles separately by language (English and Arabic).

Cubert, Harold M. The PFLP’s Changing Role in the Middle East. Portland, Oreg.: F. Cass, 1997. An overview of the PFLP and its role in Middle East and world politics. Provides a historical and ideological background to the organization, discusses Arab and Palestinian nationalism, the PFLP’s relation to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and more.

Frankel, Benjamin. The Cold War, 1945-1991. Detroit, Mich.: Manly, 1992. Focuses on Habash’s role in the Arab nationalist movement. Short bibliography, with cross-references to other Arab leaders profiled in this volume.

Halsell, Grace. “A Visit with George Habash: Still the Prophet of Arab Nationalism and Armed Struggle Against Israel.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September, 1998. An interview with Habash, with candid discussion of his justification for both domestic and international terrorism.