Page 182 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Israeli, British, and Swiss airliners and landed them
HABASH, GEORGE (1926– ) in Amman, Jordan. The PFLP’s actions sparked the
aka al-Hakim, the Physician 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
Founder of the guerrilla group Popular Front for among Palestinians as Black September.
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Dr. George Habash Habash is known for having trained the infamous
was famous for being Yasir Arafat’s main rival for international terrorist Carlos the Jackal (Ilich Ramírez
many years. The fiery Marxist leader, called al-Hakim Sánchez), and the PFLP is said to have given Carlos
or the Physician by his followers, was often said to be his first assignments. Habash made Carlos head of the
the world’s second best known Palestinian. Poor health PFLP’s European operations section in 1973.
has caused him to largely withdraw from the public In 1988, Habash accepted the principle of a divided
arena. Palestine and accepted U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338.
Habash was born in the Palestinian town of Lydda However, after Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords
in 1926, the son of a Greek Orthodox family. As a with Israel in 1993, Habash and the PFLP resigned
young medical student, Habash fled Lydda in 1948 as from the PLO Executive Committee in protest.
a refugee. (His birthplace, now part of Israel, is now In 1999, representatives of the PFLP met with
called Lod.) Habash earned his medical degree at Arafat for the first time since the 1993 split. Habash
the American University of Beirut, and in the 1950s did not attend the meeting, saying that he refuses to
he was one of the founders of the Arab nationalist meet with Arafat until the Palestinian leader admits
movement. that the November 1998 revision of the Palestinian
In 1967, Habash founded the Popular Front for the National Charter (in which the Palestinians removed
Liberation of Palestine, combining Arab nationalism language calling for Israel’s destruction) was an error.
with Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the early days of Throughout much of his later career, Habash was
the Damascus-based organization, Habash became plagued with health problems. In 1980, he became par-
known for saying, “[Arafat’s] Fatah represents the tially paralyzed as the result of a mistake during brain
petite bourgeoisie. The PFLP represents the laboring surgery. He has had several serious strokes and has
classes.” Habash built his Marxist-Leninist group into traveled to Europe for treatment. His trip to France for
the second-largest faction, after Fatah, of the Palestine medical treatment in 1992 caused a furor in that coun-
Liberation Organization (PLO). try. He was admitted to a Paris hospital and was
Under Habash’s command, the PFLP became allowed to leave France after his three-day stay, while
famous for a series of spectacular airplane hijackings angry opposition parties accused the governing
during the 1960s and 1970s. On a single day in Socialist Party of harboring a terrorist. In what became
September 1970, PFLP members hijacked American, known as the “Habash affair,” four senior civil servants

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