George Habash, the founder of Arab nationalism and architect of the infamous airline hijackings of the 1960s and '70s that brought the search for a Palestinian homeland terrifyingly close to home for millions around the world, died Saturday in Amman, Jordan.
Bedridden for years and partially paralyzed after two strokes, Habash died of a heart attack in an Amman hospital five days after surgery to implant a stent, his surgeon, Harran Zreiqat, told the Associated Press. He was believed to be 82, but the precise date of his birth could not be confirmed.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, January 30, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 49 words Type of Material: Correction
Habash obituary: The obituary of George Habash, the founder of Arab nationalism, in Sunday's California section referred to Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock as Islam's holiest shrine. In fact, Islam's holiest site is considered to be the Kaaba, which is near the center of the great mosque in Mecca.
His death came at a time of bitter divisions in the Palestinian movement between revolutionaries convinced, as he was, that violence is the only effective way to achieve a Palestinian state, and moderates who favor the diplomatic route.
With a wave of airline hijackings and the headline-grabbing seizure of a French airliner at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) inspired an image of ruthlessness in a Western psyche unattuned to the violent politics of the Middle East.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had supported them, Habash and his radical contemporaries found themselves increasingly marginalized, hidden away in secret offices in Syria while the Palestine Liberation Organization's mainstream moved toward accommodation with Israel and the West.
Habash nonetheless remained an idol to the movement's leftist intellectuals and disenfranchised thousands who inhabit Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
A Marxist physician who dreamed that a united Arab nation could force Israel to give back Palestine, Habash played the revolutionary to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's role of politician, frequently ridiculing Arafat's checkered headdress and military uniform.
His quarreling with Arafat, who died in 2004, defined the Palestinian movement's choices for decades, just as the split between Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's diplomacy-minded successor, and the militant Islamic group Hamas does today.
Accusing Arafat of selling out the Palestinian cause to the United States and Israel, Habash resisted all attempts to arrive at a negotiated resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that did not involve the return of Palestinians to their historic homelands in Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa.
