PFLP founder George Habash dies

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - George Habash, the founder of a radical movement that staged hijackings and kidnappings to highlight the Palestinian struggle, died in Jordan on Saturday, his family said. He was 80.

Habash founded the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968. A refugee from fighting which broke out over the creation of Israel in 1948 in British-ruled Palestine, he lived in exile and succumbed to a heart condition in a hospital in Amman, his doctor said.

The PFLP favors armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state and found itself sidelined in 1993 when Yasser Arafat, then leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), signed interim peace deals with Israel.

Scores of supporters thronged the hospital to offer their condolences to his wife Hilda and his two daughters.

"We will all carry the banner of Habash and the Arab nation he dearly cherished. Habash always believed Palestine would be liberated," Hilda Habash told Reuters.

She said Habash, who was hospitalized five days ago, was until the last hours of his life following events in the Palestinian territories and was deeply moved by the humanitarian plight of Gazans who are under an Israeli blockade.

"He lived for his people and died for his people," she said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's office declared a 3-day mourning period for Habash. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior Abbas aide, paid tribute to him as a "historical leader".

In Damascus, senior Hamas official Mohammad Nazzal said Habash's death was a "huge loss" for the Palestinian cause.

"We had our ideological differences, but Dr. Habash shared Hamas' opposition to the peace deals the Palestinian Liberation Organisation signed with the Jewish state as a sell-out of Palestinian rights," Nazzal said.

"He did not just establish a Palestinian group. Dr. Habash was a national Palestinian leader."

HIJACKS

Habash's PFLP, which burst on the world scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a series of airliner hijacks, opposed negotiations with Israel.

With military precision, PFLP guerrillas hijacked four Western airliners with more than 500 people aboard in September 1970 to punish Western governments for supporting Israel, win the release of prisoners and embarrass King Hussein of Jordan.

Three of the aircraft were blown up at "revolution airfield", a desert landing strip near Zarqa in Jordan, and the fourth, a Pan Am jumbo jet, was destroyed in Cairo. No passengers were involved.

A soft-spoken guerrilla leader who gave up medicine for revolution, Habash believed a Palestinian mini-state alongside Israel, as advocated by Palestinian moderates, should be used only for more assaults on the Jewish state.

Habash, who came from a wealthy Christian family, first achieved political prominence at the head of the Arab Nationalist Movement in 1952.

He stepped down as PFLP general-secretary in 2000, handing over to Abu Ali Mustafa, who was killed by Israel in 2001 during a Palestinian uprising.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Damascus)

(Reporting by Wafa Amr and Suleiman al-Khalidi; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)