Most Arab and Western journalists writing about the life and times of George Habash, who died recently in Amman, dwelt on the hijackings carried out by his PLO faction during the 1960s and 1970s.
Their focus on his impact on the West through armed action displayed that they were ignorant of, or chose to ignore, his far more important and enduring vision for the Arab world. Most did not even mention his founding of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), the sole pan-Arab party to gain adherents from Morocco in the west to Bahrain in the east. It was the ANM that made Habash, not hijackings, one of the most influential Arab figures of the 20th century and gave the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the resistance organisation he established in 1967, its considerable political clout in the region.
Habash, an Orthodox Christian, was born into a middle-class family in Lydd in 1926. He grew up during the 1936-39 revolt when Palestinians violently protested the British-backed Zionist drive to take over their country. Habash was studying paediatric medicine in Beirut when Israel launched its war of establishment in December 1947, and was visiting his family in July 1948 when Israel's underground army, the Haganah, attacked Lydd and Ramla from the air. Haganah units commanded by Yitzak Rabin then moved into the towns, which had been included in the Arab state in the UN partition resolution, and forced their inhabitants to flee on foot to the West Bank.
The Israelis shot men, women and children, looted homes and stripped refugees of their valuables. Israeli planes bombarded and troops shot at the column of frightened Palestinians as it moved towards the West Bank. During the "death march", at least 335 died of exhaustion, dehydration, bullets and bombs; the number of children who perished was never counted. Fifty thousand were driven from their homes in Lydd-Ramla region. Palestinians who took flight were not permitted to return to their homes, which were destroyed or expropriated by Israel under its absentee property law. Little wonder that a traumatised Habash became a political activist.
He returned to his studies at the American University of Beirut where he and Wadie Haddad, another Palestinian physician, joined a youth group bent on taking vengeance against Israel. Habash graduated at the top of his class in 1951. In 1952, he, Haddad, Hani Al Hindi, a Syrian, and Ahmad Al Khatib, a Kuwaiti, formed the ANM. The goal of the movement was to reunite the Arab world by reversing the division of the region into separate states by Britain and France, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.
Emerging during the decolonisation period which followed World War II, the ANM had a powerful impact on the Arab world. Habash held that Palestine could be liberated only if the Arabs joined together and campaigned for more just and equitable societies in Arab countries.
The establishment of the ANM coincided with the overthrow of the pro-British monarchy in Egypt by the Free Officers Movement, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. He adopted the ANM as the vehicle to achieve Arab unity and courted Arab intellectuals and students across the Arab world. While the movement's actual membership remained limited, its organised advocacy of Arab unity kept the idea alive and prompted its adherents to take action in the name of Arab nationalism.
Arab nationalist military officers ousted the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 and the Libyan king in 1969, and led liberation struggles in Algeria and Yemen, both of which achieved independence in 1962. They brought about short-lived unions between Egypt and Syria, Yemen and Jordan, and forged a loose federation of Egypt, Libya and Syria in the 1970s. The United Arab Emirates, formed in 1971, is a solid manifestation of the Arab nationalist dream.
Heirs of the ANM still rule Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Libya. The Maghreb Union, formed by Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, is a trading bloc with an Arab nationalist foundation. The Arab nationalist legacy overshadows Habash's later activities as a resistance leader.
Israel's victory over the Arabs in 1967 and the occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and the Syrian Golan dealt a heavy blow to the grand vision of an Arab world united in purpose if not in a single state. In December of that year, Habash and Haddad established the [PFLP], the radical, leftist group dedicated to the cause of ending Israel's occupation. The PFLP emerged on the world scene in August 1969 when Leila Khaled hijacked a civilian airliner with the aim of publicising the plight of the Palestinians.
In 1970, the PFLP seized four planes and flew three to a disused airfield in Jordan and one to Cairo. Passengers were freed before the aircraft were blown up. In 1972, Japanese Red Guard gunmen recruited by the PFLP shot down 27 people at Israel's international airport at Lydd. In 1976, Palestinian and German radicals commandeered an Air France jet carrying passengers from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens, diverted the plane to Libya and then to Entebbe in Uganda. The hijackers demanded the release of Palestinians held by Israel, as well as detainees in Kenya and Europe. Israel mounted a rescue operations when all hostages, except the 103 Israelis, were released. Three hostages died and several were wounded. Habash, who had not authorised the operation, dismissed Haddad, the PFLP's chief of external operations, who died in East Germany in 1978. Israel's Entebbe raid, celebrated in Israel and admired in the West, was the subject of books and films, most demonising Habash and the PFLP.
The second largest member of the Fateh-dominated Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the PFLP often took an independent line. Habash joined Fateh's Yasser Arafat in the 1988 proclamation of Palestinian independence, but opposed the 1993 Oslo Accord reached with Israel. Subsequently, the PFLP, Hamas and eight other dissident groups joined forces to reject the post-Oslo "peace process" which has, so far, yielded little for the Palestinians.
A secular Marxist, Habash explained that he had aligned the PFLP with the Muslim resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad because they refused to abandon the armed struggle against Israel. Habash observed: "Every Palestinian has the right to fight for his home, his land, his family, his dignity - these are his rights."
Habash dedicated his life to the causes of Arab unity and Palestinian liberation. Although he made serious mistakes during this long career, he should be remembered as an Arab hero and Palestinian patriot.
By Michel Jansen
© Jordan Times 2008
