23 Facts About PFLP

PFLP was sentenced in December 2006 to 30 years in an Israeli prison.

The PFLP currently considers both the Fatah-led government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip illegal because elections to the Palestinian National Authority have not been held since 2006.

PFLP has generally taken a hard line on Palestinian national aspirations, opposing the more moderate stance of Fatah.

The PFLP is well known for pioneering armed aircraft-hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The PFLP has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and the European Union.

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From its foundation the PFLP sought both superpower and regional patrons, early on developing ties with the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, North Korea and, at various times, with regional powers such as Syria, South Yemen, Libya and Iraq, as well as with left-wing groups around the world, including the FARC and the Japanese Red Army.

When that support diminished or stopped, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the PFLP sought new allies and developed contacts with Islamist groups linked to Iran, despite the PFLP's strong adherence to secularism and anti-clericalism.

The PFLP has been accused by Israel of diverting European humanitarian aid from Palestinian NGOs to itself.

PFLP grew out of the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab, or Arab Nationalist Movement, founded in 1953 by George Habash, a Palestinian Christian, from Lydda.

In 1969, the PFLP declared itself a Marxist–Leninist organization, but it has remained faithful to Pan Arabism, seeing the Palestinian struggle as part of a wider uprising against Western imperialism, which aims to unite the Arab world by overthrowing "reactionary" regimes.

PFLP gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a series of armed attacks and aircraft hijackings, including on non-Israeli targets.

PFLP had a troubled relationship with George Habash's one-time deputy, Wadie Haddad, who was eventually expelled because he refused orders to stop attacks and kidnapping operations abroad.

PFLP joined the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella organization of the Palestinian national movement, in 1968, becoming the second-largest faction after Yassir Arafat's Fatah.

In December 1993 PFLP withdrew from the PLO and became one of the ten founding members of the Damascus-based Alliance of Palestinian Forces, eight of which had been members of the PLO, which was opposed to the Oslo Accords process.

Currently, the PFLP is boycotting participation in the PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian National Council.

The PFLP has therefore formed alliances with other leftist groups formed within the Palestinian Authority, including the Palestinian People's Party and the Popular Resistance Committees of Gaza.

In 1990, the PFLP transformed its Jordan branch into a separate political party, the Jordanian Popular Democratic Unity Party.

PFLP is powerful politically in the Ramallah area, the eastern districts and suburbs of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the primarily Christian Refidyeh district of Nablus, but has far less strength in the rest of the West Bank, and is of little or no threat to the established Hamas and Fatah movements in Gaza.

PFLP participated in the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006 as the "Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa List".

PFLP has held that position, though since 2002 he has been incarcerated in Palestinian and Israeli prisons.

When it was formed in the late 1960s the PFLP supported the established line of most Palestinian guerrilla fronts and ruled out any negotiated settlement with Israel that would result in two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

In January 2011, the PFLP declared that the Camp David Accords stood for "subservience, submission, dictatorship and silence", and called for social and political revolution in Egypt.

PFLP gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a series of armed attacks and aircraft hijackings, including on non-Israeli targets:.