Thousands bid farewell to Palestinian leader Habash

Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:24pm EST

AMMAN Jan 28 (Reuters) - Thousands attended the burial of Palestinian Marxist leader George Habash in Jordan on Monday, chanting against Israel and vowing to carry on his struggle for a Palestinian state.

Veteran supporters mingled with leading Palestinian politicians and representatives of secular and leftist Arab groups at a cemetery outside Amman to pay their respects to Habash, who died on Saturday from a heart condition.

Hailed as a hero by many Palestinians but branded a terrorist by Israel, Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) carried out a string of airline hijackings and kidnappings to publicise the Palestinian cause in the 1970s.

"No to a peaceful settlement and yes to armed struggle," supporters chanted in the Sahab cemetery east of the Jordanian capital.

They waved pictures of Habash which had the slogan: "He lived as a fighter and died a fighter for his people."

Before his burial, a religious ceremony had been held in a Greek Orthodox church where his coffin was draped in Palestinian flag.

Habash, who was in his early 80s, was born in the town of Lydda in what was then British-ruled Palestine and is now part of Israel.

He was in medical school at the American University of Beirut when war broke out in 1948 over the creation of Israel, turning his wealthy Christian family and thousands of other Palestinians into refugees.

Habash founded the PFLP in the late 1960s, building the group into a force in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), second in size to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

He opposed peace deals with Israel and strongly believed in the right of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 to return to their homes.

The PFLP adopted the Marxist-Leninist creed of "revolutionary violence". In 1970, the PFLP destroyed three hijacked Western airliners in Jordan in front of the world's press, leading King Hussein to crack down on the guerrillas.

In 1976, some PFLP members were involved in the hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos stormed the plane and rescued Israeli and Jewish hostages. The PFLP disavowed the hijacking, which experts say was carried out by Wadi Haddad, a leader of a PFLP splinter group.

Habash stepped down as PFLP leader in 2000, handing over to Abu Ali Mustafa, who was later killed by Israel. (Writing by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Editing by Keith Weir and David Cutler)





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