Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين | |
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| General Secretary | Ahmad Sa'adat(imprisoned) |
| Deputy General Secretary | Jamil Mezher |
| Founder | George Habash |
| Founded | 1967; 58 years ago (1967) |
| Headquarters | Damascus, Syria |
| Paramilitary wing | Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-left[3] |
| National affiliation | Palestine Liberation Organization Democratic Alliance List |
| International affiliation | International Communist Seminar (defunct) |
| Legislative Council (2006, defunct) | 3 / 132 |
| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
| www | |
ThePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP;Arabic:الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين,romanized: al-Jabha ash-Shaʿbiyya li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn)[4] is a secular PalestinianMarxist–Leninist[5] organization founded in 1967 byGeorge Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest beingFatah.
The PFLP has generally taken a hard line on Palestinian national aspirations, opposing the more moderate stance of Fatah. It does not recognize Israel and promotes aone-state solution to theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict. The military wing of the PFLP is called theAbu Ali Mustafa Brigades.
The PFLP pioneered armedaircraft-hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[6] More recently, the group has participated in the ongoingGaza war alongsideHamas and otherallied Palestinian factions.[7][8][9][10] It has been designated aterrorist organization by theUnited States,[11]Japan,[12]Canada[13] and theEuropean Union.[14]
Ahmad Sa'adat, who was sentenced in 2006 to 30 years in an Israeli prison, has served as General Secretary of the PFLP since 2001. As of 2025[update], the PFLP boycotts participation in thePLO Executive Committee[1][15][16] and thePalestinian National Council.[17]
The PFLP grew out of theHarakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab, orArab Nationalist Movement (ANM), founded in 1953 byGeorge Habash, aPalestinian Christian fromLydda. In 1948, 19-year-old Habash, a medical student, went to his home town of Lydda during the1948 Arab–Israeli War to help his family. While he was there, theIsrael Defense Forces attacked the city and forced most of its civilian population to leave in what became known as theLydda Death March. They marched for three days without food or water until they reached theArab armies' front lines, leading to the death of his sister. Habash finished his medical education inLebanon at theAmerican University in Beirut, graduating in 1951.[18]
In an interview with US journalistJohn K. Cooley, Habash argued for viewing "the liberation of Palestine as something not to be isolated from events in the rest of the Arab world" and identified "the main reason for [Palestinians'] defeat" as triumph of "the scientific society of Israel" over "our own backwardness in the Arab world"; because of this, he "called for the total rebuilding of Arab society into a twentieth-century society" and a "scientific and technical renaissance in the Arab world".[19] The ANM was founded in this nationalist spirit. "[We] held the 'Guevara view' of the 'revolutionary human being'", Habash told Cooley. "A new breed of man had to emerge, among the Arabs as everywhere else. This meant applying everything in human power to the realization of a cause."[19]
The ANM formed underground branches in several Arab countries, includingLibya,Saudi Arabia andKuwait, then still under British rule. It adoptedsecularism andsocialist economic ideas, and pushed for armed struggle.
From 1962 to 1965, more than 145 ANM members, including Haddad, were trained in the Egyptian army's commando school atInshas.[20] Egypt also supplied the ANM in Lebanon with small amounts of arms and explosives.[20]
In late 1963 the ANM leadership established the Palestinian Action Command (PAC), an internal military organisation with nominal authority over the ANM's Palestinian members, wherever they were based.[21] The PAC's formation was opposed by the ANM's leftist faction, who were mostly non-Palestinian.[22]
After Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to take command of a region-wide coalition of revolutionary forces incorporating the ANM, the ANM decided to initiate preparations for armed struggle, and the PAC's name was changed to Revenge Youth Organisation (RYO).[23]) (RYO is not to be confused with Revenge Youth, a clandestine military unit founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza in the 1950s.[24])
According to historianYezid Sayigh, a three-way balance emerged within the ANM, "in which the old guardheaded by Habash and Hindi relied on the Palestinian constituency to counter the Left, but at the same time sought to contain pressures for military action against Israel."[23])
In collaboration with thePalestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO)Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA), the ANM established theAbtal al-Audah (Heroes of Return)commando group in early summer 1966.[25] The ANM exercised de facto control, unbeknownst to the PLO, which funded the outfit.[26] Heroes of Return conducted its first operation inside Israel on 19 October, which was launched from Lebanon.[27] Israel responded with a raid into Lebanon, in which its forces dynamited 118 houses.[28] Heroes of Return proceeded to launch a further seven raids from the Jordan-occupied West Bank before theJune 1967 war.[28]
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After theSix-Day War of June 1967, ANM initiated discussions with other Palestinian groups concerning the announcement of a united front organisation.[29] Included within the discussions, as well as the ANM (including the RYO), were Heroes of Return (officially a collaboration with the PLO but actually under ANM control),Ahmed Jibril's Syria-basedPalestinian Liberation Front, and a group of Jordanian Nasserists led by the former army officer Ahmed Za'rur.[30][31] These groups combined to form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which was announced to the public on 11 December 1967, to coincide with a planned attack onBen Gurion Airport inLydda, which was a failure.[32][33]
By early 1968, the PFLP had trained between one and three thousandguerrillas. It had the financial backing ofSyria, and was headquartered there, and one of its training camps was based inas-Salt,Jordan. In 1969, the PFLP declared itself aMarxist–Leninist organization, but it has remained faithful toPan-Arabism, seeing the Palestinian struggle as part of a wider uprising against Westernimperialism, which also aims to unite theArab world by overthrowing "reactionary" regimes. It published a magazine,al-Hadaf (The Target, or Goal), which was edited byGhassan Kanafani.
The PFLP gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a series of armed attacks andaircraft hijackings, including on non-Israeli targets.Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades also claimed responsibility for several suicide attacks during theAl-Aqsa Intifada. See#Armed attacks of the PFLP below.
In 1967,Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) broke away from the PFLP.
In October 1968,Ahmed Jibril led a break away from the PFLP to form thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), and was joined by Ahmed Zarur and his followers.[34] The PFLP-GC took with them around 100 to 200 guerrillas, accounting for around one quarter of the PFLP's armed strength, and Jibril's old Palestinian Liberation Front base near Damascus.[34] Zarur later split from the PFLP-GC to form theArab Palestine Organisation.[35]
In 1969, theDemocratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) formed as a separate, ostensiblyMaoist, organization underNayef Hawatmeh andYasser Abd Rabbo, initially as the PDFLP.
In 1972, thePopular Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine was formed following a split in PFLP.
The PFLP had a troubled relationship with George Habash's one-time deputy,Wadie Haddad, who was eventually expelled because he refused orders to stop hijacking operations abroad. Haddad has been identified in released Soviet archival documents as having been a KGB intelligence agent in place, who in 1975 received arms for the movement directly from Soviet sources in a nighttime transfer in the Sea of Aden.[36]
The PFLP joined thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO), theumbrella organization of the Palestinian national movement, in 1968, becoming the second-largest faction afterYasser Arafat'sFatah.[37] In 1974, it withdrew from thePLO Executive Committee (but not from the PLO) to join theRejectionist Front following the creation of thePLO's Ten Point Program, accusing the PLO of abandoning the goal of destroying Israel outright in favor of abinational solution, which was opposed by the PFLP leadership.[38] It rejoined the executive committee in 1981.[39]
In December 1993 PFLP withdrew from the PLO and became one of the ten founding members of the Damascus-basedAlliance of Palestinian Forces, eight of which had been members of the PLO, which was opposed to the Oslo Accords process. PFLP withdrew from APF in 1998. Currently, the PFLP is boycotting participation in the PLO Executive Committee[15] and thePalestinian National Council.[17]
In December 2009, around 70,000 supporters demonstrated in Gaza to celebrate the PFLP's 42nd anniversary.[40]
After the occurrence of theFirst Intifada and the subsequentOslo Accords the PFLP had difficulty establishing itself in theWest Bank andGaza Strip. At that time (1993–1996) the popularity ofHamas was rapidly increasing in the wake of[colloquialism] their successful strategy ofsuicide bombings devised byYahya Ayyash ("the Engineer"). Thedissolution of the Soviet Union together with the rise ofIslamism—and particularly the increased popularity of the Islamist groups Hamas andPalestinian Islamic Jihad – disoriented many left activists who had looked towards the Soviet Union, and has marginalized the PFLP's role in Palestinian politics and armed resistance. However, the organization retains considerable political influence within the PLO, since no new elections have been held for the organization's legislative body, thePNC.
The PFLP developed contacts at this time with Islamic fundamentalist groups linked toIran – both Palestinian Hamas, and the Lebanon-basedHezbollah. The PLO's agreement with Israel in September 1993, and negotiations which followed, further isolated it from the umbrella organization and led it to conclude a formal alliance with the Iranian backed groups.[41]
As a result of its post-Oslo weakness, the PFLP has been forced to adapt slowly and find partners among politically active, preferably young, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in order to compensate for their dependence on their aging commanders returning from or remaining in exile.[citation needed] The PFLP has therefore formed alliances with other leftist groups formed within thePalestinian Authority, including thePalestinian People's Party and thePopular Resistance Committees of Gaza.[citation needed]
In 1990, the PFLP transformed itsJordan branch into a separatepolitical party, theJordanian Popular Democratic Unity Party. From its foundation, the PFLP soughtsuperpower patrons, early on developing ties with theSoviet Union, thePeople's Republic of China, and, at various times, withregional powers such asSyria,South Yemen,Libya,North Korea, andIraq, as well as with left-wing groups around the world, including theFARC and theJapanese Red Army.[42][43] When that support diminished or stopped, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the PFLP sought new allies and developed contacts withIslamist groups linked toIran, despite the PFLP's strong adherence to secularism andanti-clericalism. The relationship between the PFLP and theIslamic Republic of Iran has fluctuated – it strengthened as a result of Hamas moving away from Iran due to differing positions on theSyrian Civil War. Iran rewarded the PFLP for its pro-Assad stance with an increase in financial and military assistance.[44] The PFLP has been accused by Israel of diverting European humanitarian aid fromPalestinian NGOs to itself.[45]
Following the death ofYasser Arafat in November 2004, the PFLP entered discussions with the DFLP and the Palestinian People's Party aimed at nominating a joint left-wing candidate for thePalestinian presidential election to be held on 9 January 2005. These discussions were unsuccessful, so the PFLP decided to support the independentPalestinian National Initiative's candidateMustafa Barghouti, who gained 19.48% of the vote.
In the municipal elections of December 2005 it had more success, e.g. inal-Bireh andRamallah, and winning the mayorship ofBir Zeit.[46] There are conflicting reports about the political allegiance ofJanet Mikhail andVictor Batarseh, the mayors of Ramallah andBethlehem; they may be close to the PFLP without being members.[according to whom?]
The PFLP participated in thePalestinian legislative elections of 2006 as the "Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa List". It won 4.2% of the popular vote, winning three of the 132 seats in thePalestinian Legislative Council. Its deputies areAhmad Sa'adat,Jamil Majdalawi, andKhalida Jarrar. In the lists, its best vote was 9.4% inBethlehem, followed by 6.6% inRamallah and al-Bireh, and 6.5% inNorth Gaza. Sa'adat was sentenced in December 2006 to 30 years in an Israeli prison.
At the PFLP's Sixth National Conference in 2000, Habash stepped down as General Secretary.Abu Ali Mustafa was elected to replace him, but was assassinated on 27 August 2001 when an Israelihelicopter fired rockets at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
After Mustafa's death, the Central Committee of the PFLP on 3 October 2001 electedAhmad Sa'adat as General Secretary. He has held that position, though since 2002 he has been incarcerated in Palestinian and Israeli prisons.
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When it was formed in the late 1960s the PFLP supported the established line of most Palestinianguerrilla fronts and ruled out any negotiated settlement with Israel that would result intwo states between theJordan River and theMediterranean Sea. Instead, George Habash in particular, and various other leaders in general advocated one state with anArab identity in whichJews were entitled to live with the same rights as any minority. The PFLP declared that its goal was to "create a people's democratic Palestine, where Arabs and Jews would live without discrimination, a state without classes and national oppression, a state which allows Arabs and Jews to develop their national culture."[citation needed]
The PFLP platform never compromised on key points such as the overthrow of conservative ormonarchist Arab states likeMorocco and Jordan, theRight of Return of allPalestinian refugees to their homes in pre-1948Palestine, or the use of the liberation of Palestine as an impetus for achieving Arab unity – reflecting its beginnings in thePan-Arab ANM. It opposed theOslo Accords and was for a long time opposed to the idea of atwo-state solution to theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict, but in 1999 came to an agreement with the PLO leadership regarding negotiations with theIsraeli government. However, in May 2010, PFLP general secretaryAhmad Sa'adat called for an end to the PLO's negotiations with Israel, saying that only aone-state solution was possible.[2]
In January 2011, the PFLP declared that theCamp David Accords stood for "subservience, submission, dictatorship and silence", and called forsocial andpolitical revolution inEgypt.[47]
In December 2013, the PFLP stated: "Hamas is a vital part of the Palestinian national movement, and this is the position of the PFLP."[48]
The PFLP gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a series of armed attacks andaircraft hijackings, including on non-Israeli targets:
The PFLP'sAbu Ali Mustafa Brigades has carried out attacks on both civilians and military targets during theAl-Aqsa Intifada. Some of these attacks are:
Three PFLP leaders, Imad Audi, PFLP’s military leader in Lebanon; and Mohammad Abdel Aal and Abdel Rahman Abdel Aal, members of the group’s political bureau, were targeted and assassinated in theSeptember 2024 Lebanon strikes by Israel.[76][77]
The military wing of the PFLP, which was founded by leftists in 1967, has carried out sporadic attacks since 7 October in retaliation for Israel's assault on Gaza.
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