Perspectives
Eulogy for a revolutionary
IN 1970, Jordan's infamous black September was enacted by Pakistan's Colonel Ziaul Huq (later the country's president) while on a tour of duty to the Hashemite Kingdom. He wreaked havoc with the Palestinian guerillas at the behest of royal authority, resulting in a bloodbath -- an event that hastened the death of a mortally shocked President Nasser as he strove to stitch afresh the Arab unity in an Arab summit convened by him.
Four years later in 1974, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hosted the Islamic countries' summit in Lahore, where there was an outpouring of praises for Yasser Arafat and his PLO from the leaders of a ragtag OIC -- another giant of which, George Habash, a secular Marxist protagonist was totally ignored. One reason may be the fact that the Palestinian struggle is looked upon as a Muslim issue, particularly in the sub- continent, although a redoubtable Arafat also was no less secular.
Yet, Dr. George Habash, considered the conscience of the Palestinian revolution, smashed those commonplace perspectives and gave the revolution a wider connotation. His death on January 26 last, from a heart attack at the age of 81, followed a long and courageous but lonely journey to keep the liberation of Palestine above religious and sectarian zealotry.
He himself had been a non-practicing Christian, and as a Marxist he never espoused hatred for Jews. He, however, fought hard against the racially constructed doctrine of Zionism. In a significant way, the perspectives of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Habash founded as a closely-knit group of Palestinian guerillas, wasn't different from what Vanessa Redgrave or Noam Chomsky, himself a Jew, stood for. Indeed, the PFLP represented the only progressive grassroots component within the Palestinian struggle.
Notwithstanding his peerless stature and secular credentials, Arafat -- also a revolutionary -- seemed to have been broken by the events following the demise of the Cold War and said good-bye to an armed struggle. Ever since, he unquestioningly submitted and agreed to whatever the Israelis and Americans told him, but Habash opposed and opted to remain in the battlefield with preference of dying, if required, with his boots on.
The presence of PFLP under the umbrella of Fatah is also proof to detractors of the struggle, who always painted the Palestinians as fanatical jihadis. The PFLP is Marxist and secular, and believes in a bi-national state for both Arabs and Jews. George Habash was the only giant amongst all the mediocre leaders left by Arafat's tragic death, for Arafat's successors are a pack of grovellers.
Habash was, in fact, the only Palestinian leader who enjoyed moral stature equal to Arafat because of his uncompromising politics and personal integrity, and that too from the Left.
Living as an exile for most of his life, Habash finally tried to settle down in Amman where he opened a people's clinic. But he was soon accused of involvement in an attempt to overthrow King Hussain, and driven underground with a 33-year prison sentence hanging over his head. He fled to Syria where he became a fawning supporter of Egypt's Nasser.
Habash's experience with the defeat of Nasserite ideology and strategy in the war of 1967 correctly led him to deduce that the only way a state armed to the teeth with American weapons and helped by the impotency of the US' client regimes in the Arab world could be dealt with was with the established principles of armed struggles well chronicled in almost all liberation wars in the past.
In fact, Habash wanted an end to the client states in the region, and realised that the Palestinian struggle was not an end in itself but a front for the eventual liberation of the entire Arab Middle East from the yoke of the Israeli-American protectorate status imposed upon it. Such is his stature that Palestinians from as diverse sides of the political spectrum as Mahmud Abbas of Fatah and Ismail Haniye of Hamas condoled his death and praised his relentless sacrifices for the Palestinian cause.
One only needs to look at what happened after Gazans broke through the wall along the Egyptian border. The only way to halt this is principled guerilla war, which will make Israel ungovernable and make the regime in Tel Aviv come to its senses.
In the aftermath Sabra and Shatilla an 1982, there gathered a gaggle of globally famous comrades in Beirut. It was embellished, among others, by George Habash and his more famous protege Leila Khaled, who had already earned international notoriety, or fame, by hijacking planes a dozen years before. Human rights activist Vanessa Redgrave read out a moving tribute to the Palestinian victims.
Habash was then recovering from brain surgery, and was in a great form because the Camp David meeting of 1979 brought together the various quarrelling factions of the PLO, as a result of which he could be on the same platform as Arafat. Habash then prophetically uttered that charity takes over when revolutionary zeal wanes. In other words, don't count on support from anyone other than yourself. The Arab and Muslim states, he added, had their own axes to grand in the Palestine question.
Habash was a great revolutionary of the 20th century -- but how great? Some fondly liken him to Fidel Castro, Ben Bella, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong. But for the moment it would be prudent to leave it for posterity after, however, disputing what the Guardian noted in its obituary to Habash: "Once converted from Nasserism to armed struggle, Habash characteristically took it to those extremes which marked him ever after as one of the great patrons of international terrorism." But, yes, for a brief heady span Habash and his newly formed PFLP held the world in thrall.
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