Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command

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Logo of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command or General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( Arabic الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين - القيادة العامة, English Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command , PFLP-GC) is a Palestinian-nationalist underground organization that fights for an independent state of Palestine. It is classified as terrorist by the US, Canada, the European Union and Israel .

history

founding

The PFLP-GC broke away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968 under pressure from the Syrian regime under the leadership of Ahmad Jibril , a former officer in the Syrian armed forces . She rejects negotiations with Israel and focuses on the armed struggle. The PFLP-GC is supported by Syria , at whose side it also acted in the Lebanese civil war . It is the only Palestinian organization allowed to keep its military positions and weapons in Syria. Their headquarters are in Damascus . It carried out several suicide and bomb attacks, including the alleged attack on Swissair flight 330 with 47 fatalities. It is present with fighters in Lebanon, Gaza Strip and the West Bank. She was a member of the PLO until her suspension in 1984 .

Armed actions against Israel

The PFLP-GC is responsible for both military and terrorist actions against Israeli targets inside and outside Israeli territory. In 1972 the group rejected an agreement between several Palestinian guerrilla organizations and the Lebanese government not to use Lebanon as a starting point for attacks on Israel any longer. At that time the PFLP-GC comprised around 300 fighters, around a third of them in Lebanon and the rest in Syria and Kuwait. In 1974 a fedayeen detachment of the PFLP-GC, consisting of a Palestinian, a Syrian and an Iraqi, penetrated the northern Israeli town of Kirjat Shmona and killed two soldiers and 16 civilians. The terrorists died when their suspected self-ignited charges exploded during a firefight with Israeli security forces. The Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir announced her resignation on the occasion of the massacre on the same day. Two days later, in a counter-attack on Lebanese towns, Israeli military killed two civilians and took 13 people hostage.

During the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (1982-2000), there were repeated armed clashes between the Israeli armed forces and the PFLP-GC, in which both Israeli soldiers and, above all, fighters of the PFLP-GC were killed in Lebanon, the main area of ​​operations at the time the organization. One of the most spectacular successes of the group, which is relatively little militarily threatening to Israel, was the prisoner exchange achieved in 1985, when three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the PFLP-GC in Lebanon in 1982 were released from 1150 offenders imprisoned in Israeli prisons - including the Japanese terrorist Kōzō Okamoto and Hamas. Guide Ahmed Yassin . In 1987, two PFLP-GC fighters entered Israel in microlight aircraft from Lebanon, where one of them ended up on a military base and there killed six soldiers and injured eight others before he was shot himself.

The PFLP-GC has been repeatedly surprised by Israeli military attacks: In 2003, in retaliation for an attack in Haifa by fighters of the Islamic Jihad group in Palestine , Israel fired at a military base north of Damascus that had previously been used by the PFLP-GC. In 2013, a PFLP-GC base south of Beirut was shelled by Israel after another guerrilla organization fired rockets across the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Activities in Syria

In June 2011 the PFLP-GC carried out a massacre in the Yarmuk refugee camp . Representatives of the government under Bashar al-Assad had asked Palestinian youth to demonstrate at the border fence to the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. Attempts to storm the fence were responded to by the Israeli military with gunfire, and 23 young people died. The funeral was attended by 30,000 people, many of whom turned their anger on the PFLP-GC, which was closely associated with the government. Guards responded to a protest march at the headquarters of the PFLP-GC by shooting into the crowd, killing a 14-year-old. A little later, the angry crowd stormed the building and set it on fire. Jibril had to be saved by the Syrian army. From then on, the Syrian regime regarded all Palestinians as hostile.

During the civil war in Syria , Syrian rebels captured the Yarmuk refugee camp on December 18, 2012. During the several days of fighting, some fighters of the PFLP-GC defected to the rebels. Ahmad Jibril fled the refugee camp on December 16. The remaining PFLP-GC fighters withdrew north to join the Syrian government forces. The behavior of the PFLP-GC during the fighting in Yarmuk met with severe criticism from other left-wing Palestinian organizations, which pointed to their small size. In 2015, several hundred PFLP-GC fighters held the northern third of Jarmuk and blocked the advance of IS and the Nusra Front on the central districts of Damascus.

ideology

The primary goal of the PFLP-GC is the destruction of the state of Israel, whose right to exist it does not recognize and instead propagates an independent state throughout Palestine in which all religions should live side by side. Therefore, the General Command rejects any political solution that would mean the recognition of the State of Israel and instead propagates the central importance of armed struggle. Despite the close connection with the Syrian Ba'ath regime , the ideological roots of the PFLP-GC lie, according to the former spokesman for the organization Fadil Shuru, in Muammar al-Gaddafi's Green Book . Shuru is further quoted as follows: "According to our ideology, we are Marxists and at the same time strive for Arab unity, because the liberation of our homeland requires Arab unity". The ideology of the PFLP-GC is thus a conglomerate of pan-Arab, socialist and nationalist content and phrases, whereby the General Command is characterized by ideological flexibility and ascribing a subordinate role to political theory.

Since the 1990s, the PFLP-GC's relations with various Islamist states such as Iran and Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have deepened. In 1996 Jibril took part in a conference of Islamists and in 1985 the PFLP-GC arranged for the release of Hamas' spiritual leader Ahmad Yassin as part of a prisoner exchange with Israel .

literature

  • Between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov: History and Politics of the Palestinian Left, Gerrit Hoekmann, 1999, Münster, ISBN 3-928300-88-1
  • Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations , Aaron Mannes, Lanham, 2004, ISBN 0-7425-3525-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Currently listed entities - Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) ( Memento from February 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1337 of the Council of 8 August 2019 for the implementation of Article 2 (3) of Regulation (EC) No. 2580/2001 on specific restrictive measures against certain persons and organizations to combat terrorism and to repeal of the Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/24 , accessed on December 7, 2019
  3. ↑ Decision (CFSP) 2019/1341 of the Council of 8 August 2019 updating the list of persons, associations and entities to which Articles 2, 3 and 4 of Common Position 2001/931 / CFSP on the application of specific measures to combat of terrorism apply, and for the repeal of Decision (CFSP) 2019/25 , accessed on 7 December 2019
  4. ↑ a b c Study by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, July 2014: Flight and Expulsion in the Syrian Conflict , pp. 18–19, 25 , ISSN  2194-2242
  5. ↑ Flight and displacement in the Syrian conflict , p. 25
  6. ↑ In the footsteps of the Würenlingen assassins , NZZ, May 12, 2018, page 15
  7. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, history and politics of the Palestinian left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p 60
  8. ^ One Guerrilla Group Rejects Beirut Pact Curbing Raids on Israel. In: The New York Times, June 30, 1972, accessed November 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ End of the Golda Meir era. In: Die Zeit from April 19, 1974, accessed on November 6, 2018
  10. ^ Yossi Melman: Background: The Mother of All Prisoner Exchange Deals. In: Haaretz.com from January 29, 2004, accessed on November 5, 2018 (English)
  11. ↑ Martin Asser: Ahmed Jibril and the PFLP-GC. In: BBC News of May 20, 2002, accessed November 5, 2018.
  12. ↑ Target of retaliation. In: The daily newspaper of October 6, 2003, accessed on November 6, 2018
  13. ^ Palestinian group says no casualties in Israeli strike: TV. In: Reuters of August 23, 2013, accessed November 6, 2018
  14. ^ A b Jonathan Steele: How Yarmouk refugee camp became the worst place in Syria. In: The Guardian of March 5, 2015, accessed November 4, 2018.
  15. ↑ http://de.euronews.com/2012/12/18/syrische-rebellen-erobern-pflp-lager
  16. ↑ PFLP on Defense in Gaza Over Ties to Assad Al Monitor, December 27, 2012 ( Memento of February 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ Nour Samaha: The Defenders of Yarmouk. In: Foreign Policy of May 4, 2015, accessed November 4, 2018
  18. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, history and politics of the Palestinian left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p 60
  19. ^ Aaron Mannes, Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations , Lanham, 2004, ISBN 0-7425-3525-8 , p. 323
  20. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, history and politics of the Palestinian left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p 60
  21. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, Between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, History and Politics of the Palestinian Left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p. 61
  22. ^ Aaron Mannes, Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations , Lanham, 2004, ISBN 0-7425-3525-8 , p. 323
  23. ^ Aaron Mannes, Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations , Lanham, 2004, ISBN 0-7425-3525-8 , p. 323
  24. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, history and politics of the Palestinian left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p 60