The New York Times-20080128-George Habash- 82- Tactician of Terrorism- -Obituary -Obit--

Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080128

George Habash, 82; Tactician of Terrorism; [Obituary (Obit)]

Full Text (595  words)[Author Affiliation] Reprinted from Sunday's late editions.

George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a hard-line Marxist group that shocked the world with a campaign of airline hijackings and bombings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, died Saturday of a heart attack in Amman, Jordan. Although accounts varied, he was believed to be 82.

He had a severe heart attack, and he died instantly, Leila Khaled, a longtime Front associate and herself a high-profile airplane hijacker in 1969, told Al Jazeera by telephone from the Jordan Hospital, where Mr. Habash had been a patient. He also had cancer.

The Palestinian ambassador to Jordan, Atala al-Khairy, said Mr. Habash had been in the hospital for a week and that he died after a procedure to implant a stent.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, ordered three days of mourning and flags lowered to half-staff in the Palestinian territories.

Mr. Habash was best known as the Palestinian leader who adapted modern terrorist tactics as a weapon in the conflict with Israel. From the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969 to the simultaneous hijacking of three Western airliners to Amman, Jordan, in September 1970, the Front stayed in the news with high-profile attacks that other Palestinian groups never seemed able to match.

When we hijack a plane it has more effect than if we kill a hundred Israelis in battle, he told the German magazine Der Stern in 1970. For decades, world public opinion has been neither for nor against the Palestinians. It simply ignored us. At least the world is talking about us now.

But his list of enemies did not stop at Israel. He was sharply critical of existing Arab governments, most of which he said should be overthrown; of a long series of attempts at peace negotiations; and of his longtime rival, Yasir Arafat. A stubborn opponent of the Oslo accords, Mr. Habash refused to set foot in the areas under the nominal control of the Palestinian Authority.

In turn, he earned the enmity of King Hussein of Jordan, who in 1970 expelled all the Palestinian guerrilla factions who had been threatening his rule -- most notably that of Mr. Habash -- in a brief but fierce civil war remembered by Palestinians as Black September.

Although his tactics softened somewhat in the 1980s, and his organization receded from the headlines, Mr. Habash remained a determined Marxist who continued to denounce Arab governments he felt were too closely aligned with the West and Palestinian leaders he suspected were ready to make concessions to Israel. In an interview in 1970, he remarked that he would not accept money from Arab countries that stink of American oil, and he frequently argued that victory over Israel would come only when the traditional Arab governments had been replaced with revolutionary regimes.

Mr. Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in December 1967 in the bitter aftermath of Israel's stunning defeat of the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Mr. Habash later remarked that the Arab defeat that year convinced him of the need to adopt a strategy like that of the Marxist guerrillas in Vietnam.

Mr. Habash, whose nom de guerre was Al Hakim, which means either the Doctor or the Wise One-- the double meaning was deliberate -- was married to a cousin, Hilda Habash, in 1961. She survives him, as do their two daughters, Mesa, a doctor, and Lama, an engineer.

[Illustration]George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in Beirut in 1979. VAETAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS