The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command ( ar, الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين – القيادة العامة) or PFLP-GC is a

Palestinian nationalist Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people that espouses self-determination and sovereignty over the region of Palestine.de Waart, 1994p. 223 Referencing Article 9 of ''The Palestinian National Charter of 1968 ...

militant organisation based in

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. It was founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril after splitting from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) based on claims that it was producing impotent intellectuals, and not making any meaningful progress in terms of armed struggle to liberate Palestine. In the 1970s and 1980s it was involved in the

Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon The Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon was a conflict initiated by Palestinian militants based in South Lebanon upon Israel from 1968 and upon Christian Lebanese factions from the mid-1970s, which evolved into the wider Lebanese Civil War ...

and launched a number of attacks against

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i soldiers and civilians; including the Avivim school bus massacre (1970), the bombing of

Swissair Flight 330 Swissair Flight 330 was a regularly scheduled flight from Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland, to Hong Kong with a planned stopover in Tel Aviv, Israel. This caused the plane to crash, killing all 47 passengers and crew. History On 21 Februa ...

(1970), the

Kiryat Shmona massacre The Kiryat Shmona massacre was an attack by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command on civilians in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on 11 April 1974. Eighteen people were killed, nearly half of the ...

(1974) and the

Night of the Gliders Night of the Gliders ( he, ליל הגלשונים, ''Leil HaGilshonim'') refers to an incident that took place on 25 November 1987, in which two Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated into Israel from South Lebanon using hang gliders to launch a s ...

(1987). Since the late 1980s PFLP-GC had been largely inactive in military activities, but re-emerged during the Syrian Civil War fighting on the side of the Ba'athist

Syrian Arab Republic Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. The group has a paramilitary wing called the Jihad Jibril Brigades.

Background

Jibril joined with

George Habash George Habash ( ar, جورج حبش, Jūrj Ḥabash), also known by his laqab "al-Hakim" ( ar, الحكيم, al-Ḥakīm, "the wise one" or "the doctor"; 2 August 1926 – 26 January 2008) was a Palestinian Christian politician who founded th ...

in 1967 as more or less an equal partner in the PFLP leadership. When he quickly tired of the group's lack of field initiative, he was therefore still able to leave while retaining a significant retainer of his previous supporters. One of his most hated enemies within the group, Naif Hawatmeh, unintentionally provided him with the pretext: While Jibril wrestled with Habash over why the Popular Front was so dependent on theoretical discussion rather than armed struggle, Hawatmeh tried to influence the PFLP in the direction of an ideology as leftist as possible. Jibril decided that Hawatmeh's theorizing was chafing the PFLP and producing an organization of impotent intellectuals, and declared as such when he formed the General Command. Habash, he stated, had become a puppet to the professors of the exile, the elite among the refugees who were well-educated and wealthy, yet preached class revolution to the masses in the camps.

History

Formation

The PFLP-GC was founded in 1968 as a Syrian-backed splinter group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was - and still is - headed by Secretary-General Ahmed Jibril, also known by the '' kunya'' "Abu Jihad" (not to be confused with Khalil al-Wazir, the head of Fatah's armed wing who used the same ''nom de guerre''), a former military officer in the

Syrian Army " (''Guardians of the Homeland'') , colors = * Service uniform: Khaki, Olive * Combat uniform: Green, Black, Khaki , anniversaries = August 1st , equipment = , equipment_label = , battles = 1948 Arab–Israeli War Six-D ...

who had been one of the PFLP's early leaders. The PFLP-GC declared that its primary focus would be military, not political, complaining that the PFLP had been devoting too much time and resources to

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

philosophizing. Although the group was initially a member of the

Palestine Liberation Organization The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and sta ...

(PLO), it always opposed

Yasser Arafat Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...

and opposes any political settlement with

; for this reason, it has never participated in the peace process. The PFLP-GC left the PLO in 1974 to join the Rejectionist Front, protesting what they saw as the PLO's move towards an accommodation with Israel in the Arafat-backed Ten Point Program of the

Palestinian National Council The Palestinian National Council (PNC) ( ar, المجلس الوطني الفلسطيني, "'Almajlis Alwataniu Alfilastiniu"') is the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and elects the PLO Executive Committee, which ...

(PNC). Unlike most of the organizations involved in the Rejectionist Front, the PFLP-GC never resumed its role within the PLO. From the start, the PFLP-GC was more concentrated on means than ends. They never depended on a political platform; most of their recruits were young, exiled, poor, illiterate, and angry. The General Command promised a gun in every hand, and the means to write their own narrative rather than read and praise those of others as the better off exiles did in universities in Europe. Jibril still used iron discipline to keep his fighters loyal and professional, and the General Command's insurgents were as a result for decades considered the best trained of any of the Palestinian guerrilla groups. What may have helped Jibril was Hawatmeh's own 1969 defection from the PFLP to form the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP, later without the "Popular"), after Habash tried to compensate for some of the problems that had caused Jibril's exit.

1970s and 1980s

In the 1970s and 1980s, the group carried out a number of attacks on Israeli soldiers and

civilians Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not " combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant ...

, and gained notoriety for using spectacular means. After 1969 Habash could no longer claim that he was the head of the true organization, as all three of the group's original triumvirate were now separate. Nevertheless, due to the PFLP's spectacular successes, including the Dawson's Field hijackings (September 1970), Lod Airport Massacre (1971), and coordination with the

Fatah Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and s ...

-backed

Black September Black September ( ar, أيلول الأسود; ''Aylūl Al-Aswad''), also known as the Jordanian Civil War, was a conflict fought in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF), under the leadership of King Hussein ...

group in the Munich Olympic killings ( 5–6 September 1972), Habash continued to be the first among equals among the Rejectionist Front, the groups that refused any permanent settlement in a framework other than military victory. From 1970 to 1973, the group targeted a number of aircraft; typically having members seduce single young women and promise them a life of adventure and love - often while getting them addicted to drugs - before asking them to carry some cash and a mysterious package onto a flight to Tel Aviv. While the girls assumed they were helping their "boyfriends" pass drugs, they were unknowingly carrying explosives. On 21 February 1970, the group used its first barometric triggers to detonate two in-flight airliners nearly simultaneously. A

Swissair Swissair AG/ S.A. (German: Schweizerische Luftverkehr-AG; French: S.A. Suisse pour la Navigation Aérienne) was the national airline of Switzerland between its founding in 1931 and bankruptcy in 2002. It was formed from a merger between Bal ...

flight to

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

that fell in

Aargau Aargau, more formally the Canton of Aargau (german: Kanton Aargau; rm, Chantun Argovia; french: Canton d'Argovie; it, Canton Argovia), is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capit ...

Canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ente ...

, killing 41, and an

Austrian Airlines Austrian Airlines AG, often shortened to Austrian, is the flag carrier of Austria and a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. The airline is headquartered on the grounds of Vienna International Airport in Schwechat where it also maintains its ...

flight from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, which actually failed to destroy the aircraft, which made an emergency landing. The PFLP-GC was also responsible for the Avivim school bus massacre in 1970 and the

in 1974. Jibril focused on carving out a stake of the PLO recruitment in Lebanese refugee camps. While Fatah absorbed enormous casualties in the 1982 Lebanon War, the General Command succeeded in surviving, and at the end retained most of its previous manpower. In one of its most famous attacks, a PFLP-GC guerrilla landed a motorized

hang glider Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised foot-launched heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered ...

(apparently supplied by Libya) near an Israeli army camp near Kiryat Shemona in Northern Israel on 25 November 1987. He succeeded to kill six soldiers and wounded several others, before being shot dead himself. The action has been seen by some as providing the catalyst for the eruption of the

First Intifada The First Intifada, or First Palestinian Intifada (also known simply as the intifada or intifadah),The word ''wikt:intifada, intifada'' () is an Arabic word meaning "wikt:uprising, uprising". Its strict Arabic transliteration is '. was a sus ...

. On 2 January 1988, nighttime Israeli airstrikes on

Ain al-Hilweh Ain al-Hilweh ( ar, عين الحلوة, lit. meaning "sweet natural spring"), also spelled as Ayn al-Hilweh and Ein al-Hilweh, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. It had a population of over 70,000 Palestinian refugees but swell ...

killed three members of PFLP-GC. It was reported that the air raid was in response to the hang glider attack. PSP positions along the coast North of Sidon were also hit and three of their members killed. In total around twenty people were killed in the attack, including seven children and one woman. In the previous two years there had been about forty Israeli air strikes on Lebanon. The PFLP-GC has not been involved in major attacks on Israeli targets since the early 1990s, but it reportedly cooperated with the

Hezbollah Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...

guerrillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tacti ...

in South Lebanon. Supporters of the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have suggested the PFLP-GC was in fact responsible.

1990s and 2000s

Following the rise of Hamas in the 1987–1991

among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jibril found an able ally in resisting the trend started by Fatah leader

toward a negotiated settlement to the

Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, beginning in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other ef ...

. By that time, the Rejectionist Front was composed primarily of leftist groups, among them the PFLP, DFLP, General Command, PLF, and numerous other small factions. However, the members of these PLO groups were limited in their ability to confront Fatah, which never lost its supremacy within the umbrella organization. The only group that waged uninterrupted attrition against Arafat was the

Fatah Revolutionary Council The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) is the most common name for the Palestinian nationalist militant group Fatah – The Revolutionary Council (''Fatah al-Majles al-Thawry''). The ANO is named after its founder Abu Nidal. It was created by a sp ...

led by maverick hardliner Sabri al-Banna (better known as

Abu Nidal Sabri Khalil al-Banna (May 1937 – 16 August 2002), known by his '' nom de guerre'' Abu Nidal, was the founder of Fatah: The Revolutionary Council, a militant Palestinian splinter group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization ...

), who was viewed by other Palestinian organizations as not so much a guerrilla as a pure criminal with no higher goal than deposing the moderates at the head of the PLO. Though many Palestinians still were opposed to compromising on the principle of defeating Israel by armed struggle, the existing groups could not channel their desires, as many of them were led by the elite among the exile population, who were detached from the reality of the refugee camps, be they in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. Many leaders of Palestinian groups lived in luxurious accommodations throughout the Eastern Bloc, Europe, or various Arab states, especially Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Jibril uniquely insisted on living in a specially designed security bunker in the Lebanon mountains, a hilly terrain that was more attuned to the image of a guerrilla leader than Arafat's mansions in Tunis. With the emergence of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad throughout the 1980s, Jibril proved more able to cope than Habash and his other allies in the Rejectionist Front. This was enabled by a factor that had nothing to do with his abilities or beliefs: While Habash was a

Greek Orthodox The term Greek Orthodox Church ( Greek: Ἑλληνορθόδοξη Ἐκκλησία, ''Ellinorthódoxi Ekklisía'', ) has two meanings. The broader meaning designates "the entire body of Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Christianity, sometimes also cal ...

and Hawatmeh a

Greek Catholic The term Greek Catholic Church can refer to a number of Eastern Catholic Churches following the Byzantine (Greek) liturgy, considered collectively or individually. The terms Greek Catholic, Greek Catholic church or Byzantine Catholic, Byzantine C ...

Christian, Jibril was a Muslim. Throughout the 1980s the General Command actively cooperated with the nascent

paramilitary group (made mostly of Shia Muslims) dedicated to armed struggle against Israel, as well as with Syria and Iran, both of whom fund and arm Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the mid-1990s, Jibril held conferences with these groups in Tehran and Damascus in order to achieve tighter coordination of activities, though his organization remained small and its own actions were more concerned with aiding Hezbollah and achieving an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Israelis never forgot Jibril's spectacular exploits, especially the Night of the Hang Gliders, and used a variety of operations to try and kill him, none successfully, although his son and heir Jihad Ahmed Jibril was assassinated by a car bomb on 20 May 2002, with the identity of the assassins unknown. Due to these activities, the General Command is regarded as the most hard-line of the old insurgent groups, and currently resists the Oslo Accords from its bases in Syria and Lebanon.

Syrian Civil War

During the war, the PFLP-FC supported the

to fight the Syrian rebels in and around Yarmouk. At the beginning of the war, tensions arose in Yarmouk between the PFLP-GC and anti-government Palestinian residents. On 5 June 2011, a number of Yarmouk residents were shot dead while protesting at the Israeli border. Allegedly angered by the PFLP-GC's refusal to take part in the protests, thousands of mourners burnt down its headquarters in Yarmouk. PFLP-GC members fired on the crowd, killing 14 Palestinians and wounding 43. On 3 August 2012, 21 civilians were killed when the Syrian Army shelled Yarmouk. Palestinian president

Mahmoud Abbas Mahmoud Abbas ( ar, مَحْمُود عَبَّاس, Maḥmūd ʿAbbās; born 15 November 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen ( ar, أَبُو مَازِن, links=no, ), is the president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian Nati ...

condemned the Syrian Army for shelling the camp and chided the PFLP-GC for dragging Palestinians into the conflict. On 5 December 2012, fighting erupted in Yarmouk between the Syrian Army and PFLP-GC on one side, and Syrian rebels on the other. The rebels included the

Free Syrian Army The Free Syrian Army (FSA) ( ar, الجيش السوري الحر, al-jaysh as-Sūrī al-ḥur) is a loose faction in the Syrian Civil War founded on 29 July 2011 by officers of the Syrian Armed Forces with the goal of bringing down the govern ...

(FSA) and a group made up of Palestinians, called Liwa al-Asifa or Storm Brigade. By 17 December, the rebels had won control of Yarmouk. Afterwards, Government and rebel representatives agreed that all armed groups should withdraw from Yarmouk and leave it as a neutral zone. The agreement also said that the PFLP-GC should be dismantled and its weapons surrendered. However, a spokesman for the pro-rebel Palestine Refugee Camp Network said, "the implementation of the truce has been problematic" because of "intermittent" government shelling of Yarmouk and clashes on its outskirts. Many PFLP-GC fighters reportedly defected to the rebels. One PFLP-GC commander said "I felt that we became soldiers for the Assad regime, not guards for the camps, so I decided to defect". He claimed that government forces stood by and watched as the PFLP-GC fought the rebels, without helping the Palestinians. Ahmed Jibril reportedly fled Damascus for the Mediterranean city of Tartous. Palestinian left-wing groups—including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the biggest Palestinian leftist group—berated Jibril and the PFLP-GC."PFLP on Defense in Gaza Over Ties to Assad"
.

Al-Monitor Al-Monitor ( ar, المونيتور) is a news website launched in February 2012 by the Arab American entrepreneur Jamal Daniel and based in Washington, DC, United States. Al-Monitor provides reporting and analysis from and about the Middle East. ...

, 27 December 2012. One PFLP official said "Everyone knows the true size of PFLP-GC. They are not representative of the Palestinians". Another said that Jibril "does not even belong to the Palestinian Left. He is closer to the extremist right-wing groups than to revolutionary leftist ones". On 18 December, the

(PNC) denounced Jibril, saying it would expel him over his role in the conflict.

International relations of PFLP-GC

Lebanon

Its role in Lebanon after the Syrian Army Left Lebanon in 2005 (see Cedar Revolution) is uncertain, and it has been involved in a number of clashes with Lebanese security forces. In late October 2005, the

Lebanese Army ) , founded = 1 August 1945 , current_form = 1991 , disbanded = , branches = Lebanese Ground Forces Lebanese Air ForceLebanese Navy , headquarters = Yarze, Lebanon , flying_hours = , websit ...

surrounded camps of the PFLP-GC in a tense standoff, after Lebanese authorities claimed that the PFLP-GC was receiving Syrian arms across the border. The group has come under fierce criticism within Lebanon, accused of acting on Syria's behalf to stir up unrest.

Syria

At the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the PFLP-GC was an ally of the

Ba'ath Party The Arab Socialist Baʿath Party ( ar, حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي ' ) was a political party founded in Syria by Mishel ʿAflaq, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Bītār, and associates of Zaki al-ʾArsūzī. The party espoused ...

-led government of Syria. The PFLP-GC was based in

Yarmouk Camp Yarmouk ( ar, مُخَيَّم ٱلْيَرْمُوْك / ALA-LC: ', ) is a district of the city of Damascus, populated by Palestinians, with hospitals and schools. It is located from the center of Damascus and within municipal boundaries (but ...

– a district of Damascus that is home to the biggest community of Palestinian refugees in Syria. Several members of the PFLP-GC's central committee opposed this alliance with the Assad government and resigned in protest."Ahmad Jibril to be expelled from the PLO"
. '' Al Akhbar (Lebanon)'', 18 December 2012.

Designations of PFLP-GC as a terrorist organization

References

External links

*
Terrorism Resources. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)
(U.S. Navy) Source: Country Reports on Terrorism, 2004. United States Department of State, April 2005.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)
(ICT)
The International Dimension of PFLP-GC Activity
by David Tal. The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. JCSS Project on Low Intensity Warfare & The Jerusalem Post INTER – International Terrorism in 1989 (pp. 61–77) Tel-Aviv, 1990
Collection of PFLP-GC posters