Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
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Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP)
Introduction
Throughout history, politics has been an activity that has always attracted controversy over the manner which it is conducted. Politician and political organizations have many a times used controversial means to attain their goals. Some of the means that have been used to gain political power include diplomacy, propaganda, violence and even terrorism. In Palestine, the political temperature has been volatile over several years. This has seen the formation of many political organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is one of the biggest organizations in the country. The means they have used to spread their political ideology since its formation have attracted a lot of attention. This paper shall support the statement that "The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was central to the creation of terrorism as a mass media event that generated international attention. The Palestinian struggle against Israel is also important because of the apparent motivation it supplied non-Palestinian organizations to take up arms against Western powers. No other ethno-nationalist struggleinvolving the use of terrorism during the modern period produced as many violent sympathizers."
Formation of PFLP
In 1967, amidst hot political relations between Israel and Palestine, a group of far-leftist individuals, led by one George Habash, came together to form an organization that would be used to liberate Palestine from Israel and the West (Bottaro, 2012). Before this, Habash had been organizing a regrouping of Palestine members into a kind of regional command. The PFLP established itself as a Marxist-Leninist movement with a communist’s stance. The organization opened up branches across the region, recruiting the youth and convincing them to join the armed struggle towards freedom. The year 1968, the organization had under its umbrella about three thousand trained fighters. The main source of financing for the group came from the government of Syria (Cordesman, 2006). Despite openly declaring themselves as Marxist Leninists, they remained loyal to Pan Arabism, which is an ideology that supports the Union of North African countries and West Asia (or generally the Arab world).
As a far-left organization, the PFLP believes that in-egalitarian political systems have to be done away with by means of revolution so that they can pave way for the formation of egalitarian systems. The PFLP therefore based its actions on the belief that they were part of the Palestine struggle that was struggling against enemies such as Israel and the West. The organization developed over the late 60s under the leadership of Habash, attaining an image of a very radical and militant faction. They used unorthodox means, such as aircraft hijackings to try to pull the attention of the authorities and foreigners (Simon, 2001). The PFLP has participated actively in Palestine’s elections and currently has elected members to the Palestine Parliament. It is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States of America, The European Union and Canada. After the formation of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as an organization with an institutional framework for militant organization, a number of other organizations thought of it as the through way for the liberation of Palestine. The central command of the PFLP was based in Syria, a sworn enemy of Israel and the West.
Ethno-Nationalist organizations
In order to understand the basis of the formation of an ethno-nationalist organization, meaning has to be given to the two elements of such an organization. First, it has to be understood that ethnicity is not the same as race. At the same time, neither is a cause of terrorism acts, as perceived by most people. Common lineage or ancestry amongst a given population where by the embers can identify with each other defines an ethnic group. For example, the PFLP is based in Palestine and in earlier times, Syria. These are people who identify themselves on the basis of common ancestry, Arab. Additionally, sovereignty comes into play while defining an ethnic group. The lack of sovereignty in a given state can be used through political science to define a certain ethnic gr...