Ahmed Jibril
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Ahmed Jibril (born 1928) is the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). Since its inception in 1968, the PFLP-GC has staged numerous attacks against Israeli and other targets, both military and civilian.
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Break from Habash
Ahmed Jibril was originially defined as one of the key officers in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the group launched by George Habash as a communist armed movement in response to the more nationalism-based tenets of Yasser Arafat's Fatah (Harakat Tahrir Filastin;Palestine National Movement). Habash defined himself from Arafat tactically by pioneering airline highjacking as a terror tactic, as well as bombings, many of them targeted at European civilians. Jibril broke away from the PFLP on tactical grounds, mostly a result of his disagreement with the use of highjackings. He believed that by injuring the Israeli security and civilian apparatus directly through attrition would trigger economic depression in Israel. Although for decades the PFLP-GC's ideology was almost identical to its parent groups the PFLP and PLO, Jibril never wavered from his belief that Palestine could only be liberated through military attrition. He joined Habash and other PLO splinter groups in the "Rejection Front", which opposed negotiation of any kind with the Israeli government. He launched a variety of inventive attacks, including the legendary "Night of the Hang-gliders" (1988) that earned him the eternal enmity of Israelis by embarrassing their border security.
Relationship with Islamist states
Jibril was also the first old guard PLO militant to embrace the aid of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad on a tactical basis. Unlike George Habash, a Greek Orthodox Christian, Jibril was as a Muslim able to corrolate Islamic radicalism to his veteran Marxist ideology, but by the earlier 1990s he had long ceased to be a key threat to the Israelis now that Hamas had sprouted in Gaza and the West Bank. Though he is sporadically heard from, it is widely doubted that he will ever regain his traditional importance.
Signature
Samuel Katz's Israel vs. Jibril distinguishes the PFLP-GC and Jibril's strategy from the rest of the PLO by its emphasis on military training and equipment, and not on declarations and publicity stunts. But this caused the group to fail to make a significant mark on the public debate. Since 1994's Oslo Accords their support shrank both among doves, who flocked to Fatah's new Palestinian Authority, and hawks who mainly backed the more grassroots Hamas and the PFLP, which was established in the West Bank.
On May 7, 2001, the Israeli Navy seized a Palestinian boat filled with heavy weapons in the port of Haifa. Jibril is rumored to have been behind the shipment of weapons, which were bound for the Gaza Strip.
On May 20, 2002, Jibril's son, Jihad Ahmed Jibril, who headed the military wing of PFLP-GC, was killed in a car bombing in Beirut. The assassination was blamed on Israel, although the Jibril family and the PFLP-GC have many enemies among both Palestinians and others in Lebanon.