Hawatmeh, Nayef (∼1937–)

Nayef Hawatmeh (aka Najib Hawatmeh) was one of the most powerful Palestinian terrorists during the 1960s and 1970s. He is the founder and leader of the Syria-based militant Marxist group Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

Hawatmeh was born to a Greek Orthodox family in Salt, Jordan. He joined George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but disagreements and power struggles between the two led him to leave the Popular Front in 1969. He then formed the Democratic Front, a Marxist-Leninist organization working to create an independent, secular Palestinian state through revolution, and he brought other more radical Popular Front members into his new organization. The group, which was strongly connected with the U.S.S.R. and other Communist countries during the Cold War, has long been based in Damascus, Syria.

During the 1970s, Hawatmeh became famous for masterminding plane hijackings and other terrorist acts. In 1974, Democratic Front members attacked a school in the Israeli town of Maalot, taking the children hostage and killing more than 20. When Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel in 1993, Hawatmeh condemned him and famously called him “an American stooge.”

Nonetheless, Hawatmeh (said to be acting in accord with Syrian leaders) soon took a more [Page 253]moderate tack. At the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in February 1999, Hawatmeh shook hands with Israeli president Ezer Weizman and complimented him for being a man of peace. Weizman told Hawatmeh that the time had arrived for Israel to make peace with Syria and Lebanon. The controversial handshake was much discussed in the international press, as reporters and Israeli and Palestinian officials disagreed over who had initiated the gesture.

In August 1999, Hawatmeh met with Arafat for the first time in six years, in response to Arafat's call to strengthen the Palestinian position before upcoming talks with Israel.

Most active during the 1970s and early 1980s, the DFLP has lost much of its influence in recent years. The group now largely focuses on social and political actions. The U.S. State Department has dropped the Democratic Front from its list of active foreign terrorist groups, and in 2007, Israel allowed Hawatmeh to return to the West Bank.