George Habash

George Habash (Arabic: جورج حبش‎), also known by his laqab "al-Hakim" (Arabic: الحكيم‎, "the wise one" or "the doctor"; 2 August 1926 – 26 January 2008) was a Palestinian Christian politician who founded the left-wing secular nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Habash served as Secretary-General of the Palestine Front until 2000, when ill health forced him to resign.

Early life

Habash was born in Lydda (today's Lod) to an Eastern Orthodox Palestinian family in 1926. As a child, he sang in the church choir. Habash, a medical student at the American University of Beirut, was visiting his family during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In July 1948, the Israeli Defence Force captured Lydda from Jordanian and Arab Liberation Army forces, expelling all of the town's Arab residents and killing Habash's sister. Habash and his remaining family became refugees and were not allowed to return home.

Political thinkers who were influences on Habash at this period included Constantin Zureiq, whose lectures at AUB on 'Arab nationalism and the Zionist danger' in the late 1940s and early 1950s Habash had attended, and Sati' al-Husri an Arab Muslim intellectual who emphasized national cohesiveness, territorial patriotism, and loyalty to the state, and gave priority to Arab unity over Islamic unity.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (Arabic: الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين, al-Jabhah al-Sha`biyyah li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn) is a secular Palestinian Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest being Fatah. PFLP is described as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and the European Union. Other countries, such as India, China, Russia and the United Kingdom do not designate the PFLP as a terrorist group.

From its foundation the PFLP sought both superpower and regional patrons and early developed ties with the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union and, at various times, with regional powers such as Syria, South Yemen, Libya and Iraq, as well as left-wing groups around the world, including the PKK, FARC and the Japanese Red Army. When that support diminished, or stopped, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the PFLP sought new allies and developed contacts with Islamist groups linked to Iran, despite the PFLP's strong adherence to secularism and anti-clericalism. The relationship between the PFLP and the Islamic Republic of Iran has fluctuated – it strengthened as a result of Hamas moving away from Iran due to differing positions on the Syrian Civil War. Iran rewarded the PFLP for its pro-Assad stance with an increase in financial and military assistance.

Popular front

A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, usually made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal (or "bourgeois") forces as well as social-democratic and communist groups. Popular fronts are larger in scope than united fronts.

In addition to the general definition, the term "popular front" also has a specific meaning in the history of Europe and the United States during the 1930s, and in the history of Communism and the Communist Party. During this time in France, the "front populaire" referred to the alliance of political parties aimed at resisting Fascism.

The term "national front", similar in name but describing a different form of ruling, using ostensibly non-Communist parties which were in fact controlled by and subservient to the Communist party as part of a "coalition", was used in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Not all coalitions who use the term "popular front" meet the definition for "popular fronts", and not all popular fronts use the term "popular front" in their name. The same applies to "united fronts".