Amman - George Habash, a prominent Palestinian guerrilla leader for nearly five decades, died at Jordan's King Hussein Medical Centre at the age of 82 on Saturday. Habash, who was known as Al-Hakim, founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist Palestinian guerilla group, in 1967. A long time rival of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Habash's PFLP would become one of the two largest groups within the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Habash was born in 1926 in Lydda to a Palestinian Christian family and leaves behind a wife and two daughters. Palestinian officials in Ramallah said he had died of a heart attack. The PFLP said Habash would be buried in Amman either Monday or Tuesday.
Habash graduated as a physician from the American University of Beirut in 1951 and in that year he became a founding member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, inspired by Nasserism and other pan-Arab and socialist doctrines.
Following the defeat of Arab armies in the Six Day War, Habash founded the PFLP and held the post of secretary general for 33 years, stepping down in 2000 for health reasons.
The PFLP became known in the 1970s through a string of Western plane hijackings and bloody attacks inside Israel.
