Habash, George (1926–)

aka al-Hakim, the Physician

Founder of the guerrilla group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Dr. George Habash was famous for being Yasir Arafat's main rival for many years. The fiery Marxist leader, called al-Hakim or the Physician by his followers, was often said to be the world's second best known Palestinian. Poor health has caused him to largely withdraw from the public arena.

Habash was born in the Palestinian town of Lydda in 1926, the son of a Greek Orthodox family. As a young medical student, Habash fled Lydda in 1948 as a refugee. (His birthplace, now part of Israel, is now called Lod.) Habash earned his medical degree at the American University of Beirut, and in the 1950s he was one of the founders of the Arab nationalist movement.

In 1967, Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, combining Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the early days of the Damascus-based organization, Habash became known for saying, “[Arafat's] Fatah represents the petite bourgeoisie. The PFLP represents the laboring classes.” Habash built his Marxist-Leninist group into the second-largest faction, after Fatah, of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Under Habash's command, the PFLP became famous for a series of spectacular airplane hijackings during the 1960s and 1970s. On a single day in September 1970, PFLP members hijacked American, Israeli, British, and Swiss airliners and landed them in Amman, Jordan. The PFLP's actions sparked the expulsion of Palestinian guerrillas from their bases in Jordan and led to the fighting between Jordanian troops and Palestinians that would come to be known among Palestinians as Black September.

Habash is known for having trained the infamous international terrorist Carlos the Jackal (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez), and the PFLP is said to have given Carlos his first assignments. Habash made Carlos head of the PFLP's European operations section in 1973.

In 1988, Habash accepted the principle of a divided Palestine and accepted U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338. However, after Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel in 1993, Habash and the PFLP resigned from the PLO Executive Committee in protest.

In 1999, representatives of the PFLP met with Arafat for the first time since the 1993 split. Habash did not attend the meeting, saying that he refuses to meet with Arafat until the Palestinian leader admits that the November 1998 revision of the Palestinian National Charter (in which the Palestinians removed language calling for Israel's destruction) was an error.

Throughout much of his later career, Habash was plagued with health problems. In 1980, he became partially paralyzed as the result of a mistake during brain surgery. He has had several serious strokes and has traveled to Europe for treatment. His trip to France for medical treatment in 1992 caused a furor in that country. He was admitted to a Paris hospital and was allowed to leave France after his three-day stay, while angry opposition parties accused the governing Socialist Party of harboring a terrorist. In what became known as the “Habash affair,” four senior civil servants [Page 160]and an adviser to President François Mitterrand were fired. Mitterrand himself told journalists that when he heard Habash had been allowed into the country he thought that those responsible had gone “mad.”

In recent years, Habash has largely withdrawn from public view; he stepped down from PFLP leadership in July 2000, and continues to live in Damascus, Syria. In August 2001, Israeli forces assassinated Habash's successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, killing him as he sat in his Ramallah office.

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