THE PALESTINE LIBERATION FRONT (PLF)

The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)

The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)

Introduction

The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) is an extremist organization of Palestine, which is assigned as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, and the European Union. PLF is currently led by Dr. Wasel Abu Yousef. The PLF is a Palestinian freedom fighter group founded by Ahmad Jibril in 1965, based in Syria. The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) was merged into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967. The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) was initially established in 1961by Shafiq al-Hout and Ahmed Jibril. It had Syrian backing. PLF combined with two other organizations in 1967, The Young Avengers, and the Arab Nationalist Movement-affiliated Heroes of the Return (abtal al-awda) to structure the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). Ahmed Jibril separated from the PFLP in April 1968 to outline the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), that restored to the powerfully pro-Syrian place of the earlier PLF. This ultimately led to a restoration of the PLF. So far, the PLF leaders were working in the PLO. When PLO signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, Abu Abbas approved desert violence and admitted “right to exist” of Israel. The PLF had offices in Iraq, Lebanon and in Palestinian region, but its operations have decreased. This paper discusses the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).

Discussion

The PLF began as a breakaway group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command sometime during the middle 1970s. It is pro-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and was led by Muhammad Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Abbas), a former member of the PLO Executive Committee who was captured by the U.S. forces in Baghdad in April 2003. The PLF has committed attacks against Israel by using hang gliders with mixed success. Its most notorious activity was the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, the achille lauro. An American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered in this attack. (Smothers, 2005)

The Palestine Liberation Front (Jabhat al-tahrir al-filastiniyya) was formed in April 1977 as the result of a schism within the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). The PLF was founded in the context of intense Syrian-Iraqi rivalry for influence within the Palestinian national movement and, more precisely, Baghdad's success in enticing a leading PFLP-GC cadre, Muhammad Abbas (also known as Abu al-Abbas) to defect from the pro-Syrian PFLP-GC and accept Iraqi patronage. In addition, the mainstream Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was experiencing serious tensions with Damascus and improving relations with Iraq, also assisted the formation of the PLF. (Abukhalil, 2000)

Palestine Liberation Front-PLF. The PLF emerged in 1976 as an Iraqi-backed splinter from the PFLP-GC. In the early 1980s the group itself split into two factions—a Damascus-based group led by Talaat YACOUB, which opposed PLO chair Yasir Arafat, and a Baghdad- and Tunis-based group led by Muhammad ABBAS (Abdul ABBAS), who was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by Italian courts for his alleged role in masterminding ...