Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

In 1969, after a power struggle with his leader George Habash, Najib Hawatmeh left the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He and other left-wing PFLP members split to form the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a marginal group that has made multiple small attacks on Israeli targets.

The DFLP began as a Marxist-Leninist organization with the goal of creating an independent Palestinian state though a revolution of the masses. The group cultivated relationships with radical organizations and Communist parties in the Middle East.

The DFLP committed its most notorious act of terror in 1974, when members attacked a school in Maalot, a town in northern Israel, and killed 20 teenagers. In 1983, the group kidnapped Israeli Army sergeant Samir Assad. Press reports later delighted in reporting that a female DFLP member had caught Assad in a “honey trap,” courting him for several months until he visited her village and was taken hostage. Assad was later killed; while DFLP members declared he died during Israeli Air Force bombings at their base, Israeli Army pathologists reported that he had been murdered by his captors in cold blood. Assad's corpse was returned to Israel eight years after he was kidnapped in return for the release of a DFLP activist. In 1991 the group split into two groups, creating a pro-Arafat faction and Hawatmeh's more radical faction.

The DFLP is a longtime critic of the peace process with Israel, but since Yasir Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo accords the group has positioned itself politically between Arafat's Fatah and more radical, rejectionist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Unlike fellow Palestinian guerrilla movements, including the PFLP, Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command and Abu Abbas's Palestine Liberation Front, the DFLP was not listed as an active foreign terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in its most recent report on global terrorism.

In August 2001, the group resurfaced in world headlines when members claimed responsibility for an attack on a Gaza base that killed three Israeli soldiers. Israeli officials, however, cast doubt on the claim and suggested that members of Arafat's Fatah organization were behind the raid. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., an Abu Dhabi television station reported receiving a call from the DFLP claiming responsibility for the massacre. DFLP leaders, however, denied any involvement and condemned the acts of terror. The United States later charged Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives with responsibly for the attacks.

In February 2002, five DFLP members were killed when their car exploded in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian security officials told the press that Israeli helicopters had fired missiles at the vehicle; Israeli officials did not comment on the Gaza explosion. The press reported that pieces of Kalashnikov rifles had been found with the men's bodies. The DFLP vowed retaliation for the deaths.