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1 year ago

(FULL INTERVIEW PDF)

GEORGE HABASH founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

Excerpts from “Taking Stock. An Interview with George Habash” (1998) by Mahmoud Soueid:

Soueid: What message do you have for future generations? Habash. On the basis of what life has taught me, taking the bitter and the sweet together, I am convinced that human history moves in a progressive direction. I say this confidently and hopefully, in spite of all the failures and defeats we have suffered. Despite the bitter struggle between the forces of progress and those of darkness, specifically in the Arab region, I predict that the future belongs to our nation. But hopes, wishes, and dreams alone will not achieve our objectives or bring victory.... One cannot roll back the wheel of history, but we can make sure that the lessons of the past are not dissipated or squandered in a fit of emotional, destructive, and unhealthy rejection of history. History is a register open to whoever has the determination and ability to merit an entry therein and the staying power to continue to grace its bright and leading pages. I am full of hope that the generations of our children and our grandchildren will have a future that is brighter than our present. I derive immense satisfaction from this thought.

Soueid: You returned to Lydda during the 1948 war Habash: It was June 1948. The academic year was over, and the university was closed. By that time, the Zionist forces had expelled the population of Jaffa, and the exodus from Palestine was at its peak. Many had fled to Lydda,

including my parents. They were fairly well off-my father had a store, you could call him a merchant-and they had sent me money, wanting me to stay in Beirut. My mother was always worrying about me. So they were very surprised when I showed up in Lydda. They didn't be- lieve I could be of any use under the circumstances. I thought about it. Could I fight? Since I had already started to study medicine, I thought I could be of service in this area. There was a doctor at Lydda Hospital, from the Zahlan family. I began to serve as Dr. Mustafa Zahlan's assistant. Soueid. What was the situation in Lydda like at the time? Habash: There was an extraordinary anxiety, like in the other towns and villages that hadn't yet fallen to the Jews. Air raids had the population terror- ized, and the town was overflowing with refugees from the surrounding ar- eas that had been attacked by the Zionist gangs. The Lydda branch of the Arab Higher Committee headed by Hajj Amin al-Husseini urged people to stay put and even tried to prevent them from leaving. Some took comfort from the presence of an Arab Legion force near Lydda,4 thinking it would save the city when the Jewish forces launched their massive assault.5 Soueid: Where were you at the time of the attack? Habash: I was at the hospital, helping Dr. Zahlan. The place was overflow- ing with dead and wounded, and the situation was quite terrifying. I was totally occupied when my mother's maternal aunt came to the hos- pital looking for me. She wanted me to return home, saying my mother was worried about me. Of course I refused. Finally she had to tell me that my sister had been killed, my older sister whom I loved dearly [he pauses to control himself. As I i-ished through the streets, there was great confusion. Dead and wounded, some of whom I knew, were strewn along the side of the road. We buried my sister near our house because we could not get to the cem- etery. Three hours later, Jewish fighters stormed the house, screaming: "Out! Out! Get out!" My mother and my sister's children-including a small child we had to carry-ran out, as did other relatives and neighbors. We had no idea where to go, but the Jewish soldiers ordered us to get moving. So we walked. It was a hot day in Ramadan. Some people around us were saying it was the Day of judgment, others said we were already in Hell. When we reached the outskirts of town, we found a Jewish checkpoint where those leaving were being searched. We had no weapons. But our neighbor's son, Amin Hanhan, apparently had some money concealed on him and wouldn't let them search him. A Zionist soldier shot him dead right in front of our 4. A small force, about a company strong (100 soldiers), was stationed halfway between Lydda and Ramla. 5. Operation Dani, launched 9-10 July 1948. The expulsion of the city's inhabitants was comnplete by 14 July. See the introduction to Spiro Munayyer, "The Fall of Lydda," in jPS 108.

$Soueid. You said earlier that it was the breakup of the UAR that led to greater depth in your socialist thinking and drove you to Marxism. Habash: The breakup of the union opened my eyes, forcing me to look into the forces that had brought it about. I gained a deeper understanding of class struggle, coming to realize the extent to which it was a factor in our society. I also drew lessons from Vietnam. I see no contradiction between being an Arab nationalist and being a true socialist. But my real commitment to Marxism came after the 1967 war. My Marxism grew deeper during my imprisonment in Syria. I am indebted to my jailer, 'Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, who kept me in solitary confinement for nine or ten months, thinking he would break me. I spent that entire period reading all the collected works of Marx and Engles, of Lenin, also of Ho Chi Minh and Mao. It was after that that I wrote the declaration of the [Popular] Front's second national convention. Soueid. How do you see relations between the Popular Frontfor the Libera- tion of Palestine (PFLP) and Fatah now with regard to arnmed struggle? Habash: Armed struggle was a common denominator between us and Fatah until Abu 'Ammar [Yasir Arafat] caved in and signed the Oslo agreement. But we always differed on major issues. For example, we always stressed the interdependence of the Palestinian and Arab nationalist dimensions, that the liberation of Palestine cannot be achieved without this interdependence. Fatah's grave error-its fatal error-was to disengage the Palestinian cause from the Arab nationalist cause. Second is the class dimension. When the bourgeoisie achieves its class objectives, it ceases to fight. What happened was that a certain class fraction, represented now by the Oslo team, believes it has scored an achievement. But what of the masses? What about their interests? Look at what has become of the masses. The corrlption and co-optation of the Palestinian masses by Fatah constitutes a calamity that boggles the mind. Those same masses that had survived all the wars ancl the attempts to marginalize and defeat them, that had withstood the Zionist militaliy machine inside and otutside the occtupied territories are now, after thirty years, de- spairing and despondent under their bourgeois leadership, due to the under-$

mining of their nationalist achievements and institutions and the stifling of democracy by the repressive state apparatuses. Mafias are on the rise, and connections with the occupying power are being exploited to secure mo- nopolies on daily necessities. Still, although I lay the basic blame for the current state of affairs on the Palestinian Authority team, I do not exempt the opposition, which has not risen to the challenge or been true to its declared objectives and programs. As for armed struggle, the PFLP advocated it until the intifada. Under armed struggle, it is the fedayeen who fight, but under the intifada, it is all the Palestinian people-children, women, artists, everybody. With the in- tifada, I felt for the first time that it was possible to achieve freedom and independence in some part of Palestine. I know now that there were those who turned armed struggle into a sa- cred rite. We've gone beyond this notion now and see armed struggle as part of the wider political battle. Whether or not one adopts armed strutggle is determined not by matters of conscience but by the nature and practices of the enemy. It is also determined by the objectives of the Palestinian people objectives that cannot be achieved by diplomatic action alone but that re- quire a comprehensive struggle in which revolutionaly violence, in its vari- ous manifestations, has a special place. There is no contradiction between this and other forms of struggle, such as the political, cultural, and economic. But the Oslo agreement squandered the achievements of the intifada in the occupied homeland, just as it squandered the achievements of the armed struggle phase. In fact, putting an end to the intifada was one of Israel's basic conditions for agreeing to the Oslo accord.

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1 year ago

George Habash speaks in Beirut

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