Ahmad Jibril
Ahmad Jibril ( Arabic أحمد جبريل, DMG Aḥmad Ǧibrīl ; also Jibril ; * 1938 in the village of Jasur, near Jaffa; † July 7, 2021 in Damascus ) was the founder and leader of the group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), part of a left-wing secularized Palestinian rejection front, so-called because they reject proposals for peaceful coexistence with Israel .
Since its inception in 1968, the PFLP-GC has carried out numerous attacks on Israeli and other targets, both military and civil.
Life
Jibril was in 1938 in the east six kilometers of the city of Jaffa village Jasur ( Arabic يازور; English Yazur ) born. His father was a Palestinian, his mother had Circassian roots and came from Syria. Ahmad was the only son in the family and had five sisters.
After their home village was conquered, depopulated and later destroyed by the Hagana before the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948 , the family fled to Syria , where they first lived in Damascus and later in Kuneitra . After graduating from school in 1956, Jibril attended a military academy in Egypt until 1959 and later achieved the rank of army captain in the Syrian armed forces .
Jibril had eight children. His eldest son, Jihad Ahmad Jibril, headed the military wing of the PFLP-GC, was slated to succeed Jibril and was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on May 20, 2002.
PFLP-GC
Jibril co-founded the Palestine Liberation Front in 1959 and joined with George Habasch to create the 1967 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine , a communist armed movement opposed to the nationalism of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Jibril split from the PFLP over the dispute between Habash and the Syrian government; he was not deterred in his support for Syria; his group stayed in Damascus .
Although for many decades the ideology of the PFLP-GC was largely identical to that of the PFLP, Jibril did not compromise on its conviction that Palestine could only be liberated through military victory. He allied himself with Habasch and other factions in the so-called Rejection Front, which rejected negotiations of any kind with the Israeli government. Jibril launched a number of ingenious attacks, including the "Night of the Hang Glider" in 1988.
On May 7, 2001, the Israeli Navy landed a Palestinian boat loaded with heavy weapons in the port of Haifa . Jibril is believed to be behind the shipment destined for the Gaza Strip .
Relations with Islamists
Jibril was the first leader of a group of the Palestinian national movement to seek help from the Islamic Republic of Iran , Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad .
In the early 1990s, with the rise of Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank , Jibril ceased to be the main threat to Israelis.
Web links
- A series of interviews with Al-jazeera (2004) (Arabic)
- Marcel Gyr: Arab Terror in Switzerland (3/4). The man behind the assassin. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from December 30, 2014
Individual evidence
- ^ Carnet noir - Mort à Damas d'Ahmad Jibril, figure de la politique palestinienne. In: lematin.ch. July 7, 2021, accessed July 7, 2021 (French).
- ↑ a b القيادة العامة الفلسطينية كما يراها أحمد جبريل Interview in: Al Jazeera of March 21, 2004, accessed on November 5, 2018 (Arabic).
- ↑ Yazur. Website of the Israeli non-governmental organization Zochrot , accessed on November 5, 2018.
- ↑ Thousands swear vengeance at Jibril's son's funeral. In: Der Standard of May 22, 2002, accessed November 5, 2018.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jibril, Ahmad |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jibril, Ahmed; أحمد جبريل (Arabic) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Palestinian leader |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Jasur |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 7, 2021 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Damascus |