CORA

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Originally the Palestinian Liberation Front was founded by Ahmad Jibril in 1961, but in December 1967 it merged with the Heroes of the Return group and The Youth of Revenge group (the military wing of the Arab Nationalist Movement - ANM) to form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the leadership of George Habash. Ahmad Jibril split from the PFLP in April 1968 and formed a new organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC).

The Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) was set up on April 24, 1977 due to a split in the The Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine - General Command. The split was the result of the confrontation between Syria and PLO in Lebanon and Jibril's PFLP-GC support to the Syrian intervention in Lebanon on the Maronites' side. The new organization was headed by Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas) and Tal'at Ya'akub.

The PLF was essentially active on the Israeli northern border and staged attacks against civilian and military targets, trying also to take hostages during its operations.

On the background of the internal rebellion in Fatah's ranks after the Lebanese war of 1982, the organization split again into three small organizations in 1983-1984. Each faction continued to carry the original name and each claimed to represent the mother-organization. The three faction were:

a. The faction headed by Abd al-Fatah Ghanim, a member of the central committee of the organization, seized control of the organization's offices in Damascus, and supported the group of Fatah rebels and the Rejection Front organizations sponsored by Syria. The faction staged terrorist attacks against Israel through the Lebanese border.

b. The faction headed by Tal'at Ya'akub, the general secretary of the PLF, remained neutral in the struggle between the various organizations and settled its forces in Lebanon. Ya'akub died in November 1988 of a heart attack and his faction disintegrated.

c. The faction headed by Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas), the deputy general secretary, sided with Fatah and Arafat. He joined the PLO and his men and his headquarters were transferred to Tunisia. Following the attack against the Achille Lauro ship in October 1985, Abu Abbas was expelled by the Tunisian authorities and established his headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq. This faction had the largest membership, of about 400.

In November 1986 Abu Abbas and Tal'at Ya'akub's factions opened merger negotiations, which succeeded only in November 1989, after Tal'at Ya'akub's death. The general secretary, Abu Abbas, was elected to the PLO's executive committee and the PLF actually became a satellite of Fatah, although the organization was supported, logistically and in training, by Libya and Iraq.

The organization has performed in the past several prominent terror attacks, some of them sophisticated, and served as an example to other Palestinian terrorist groups. It had a naval unit and a unit of light planes and gliders for terrorist attacks against Israel.

In the last few years the heads of the organization are politically active in the PLO, although the independent organizational framework still exists, especially in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. There they are also involved , side by side with Fatah, in local clashes with members of the organizations patronized by Syria.

After the Oslo agreement the Abu Abbas faction accepted the PLO's political decision to abandon terrorism. The organization is based mainly in Lebanon and Tunisia, and has several hundred members there. It doesn't and never had any support among Palestinians in the Territories.

Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas) was born in Safed in 1948 and his family flew to Syria the same year. He became a member of Ahmad Jibril's PFLP-GC in 1968, but disputed with Jibril over the pro-Syrian stance of the organization and finally left it in April 1977 and formed the PLF. Abu Abbas was considered to be pro-Iraqi. He was wounded during the war in Lebanon in 1982. He became a member of PLO's Executive Committee in 1984 and during the Palestinian National Council meeting of 1989 supported the organization's acceptance of UN's resolution 242. Abu Abbas became famous after his organization hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in October 1985. The PLF and Abu Abbas personally received consistent financial assistance from Yasser Arafat.

Abu Abbas returned to Gaza Strip after the Oslo agreement. There is still an international American warrant against Abu Abbas for his responsibility in the murder of Leon Klinghoffer during the Achille Lauro hijacking.

September 16, 1978: Failed attempt of a squad to penetrate into Kiryat Shmona.

April 22, 1979: A squad of four terrorists penetrated from Lebanon to Nahariya using a rubber boat. The squad took over a house in Nahariya, took part of the family hostages, murdered the father, his daughter and a police officer and injured four citizens.

March 7, 1981: Failed attempt of a two member squad flying gliders to penetrate from the Lebanese border to the Haifa area. Both terrorists were forced to land near the Israeli border and were captured. Their intention was to throw bombs and grenades from the air in the Haifa area.

April 16, 1981: Failed attempt of a two member squad to penetrate from the Lebanese border flying a balloon, in order to take hostages. The balloon was shot down by the IDF in the Lebanese area next to the Israeli border and both terrorists were killed.

October 7, 1985: A four member squad took over the Italian cruise ship Aquille Lauro, while it was sailing from Alexandria towards Israel. The squad murdered Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly invalid passenger on the ship and Jewish American citizen. The members of the squad turned themselves to the Egyptian authorities and Abu Abbas and the four terrorists were permitted to fly away in an Egyptian plane. The plane was forced by US fighter planes to land in Sicily, where the Italian authorities claimed jurisdiction and released Abu Abbas. Later he was convicted to life imprisonment in absentia. The four terrorists who participated in the hijacking were tried in Italy and sentenced to prison by the Italian courts.

January 6, 1990: Muhammad Amin Jarar, member of the PLF and resident of Jenin, was convicted in a military court in Israel for planning a terrorist attack against Israeli tourists in Egyptian tourist sites.

May 30, 1990: A squad of 17 members attempted a seaborne attack on the Tel Aviv beaches and hotels, with the intention to kill tourists and Israeli citizens. The five rubber-boats they used were intercepted by Israeli military forces on the Nitzanim beach and four of the terrorists were killed and 12 were taken prisoners. The terrorists trained in Libya, which gave massive logistic support to the operation and provided the mother-ship from where the rubber-boats took-off. Tterrorist raid provoked the suspension of the dialogue the United States led at that time with the PLO.

During the 1980s several attempts of squads from the Tal'at Ya'akub faction to penetrate from Lebanon to Israel were foiled in the security zone in Southern Lebanon, before they even arrived at the Israeli border.

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