Meeting George Habash

You might pause to think of George Habash every time you check in for a flight. Since his PFLP hijacked an El Al plane in 1968, going to the airport has never been the same. 9/11 just made the security checks worse, but the metal detectors and body frisks started because of Habash's exploits 40 long years ago.

Hence, the life of Habash, who died at age 82 in Amman on Saturday, bears some reflection on the roots of terrorism and the seemingly unstoppable whirlwind of violence that continues in the Middle East. (See my Habash obituary on time.com.) He and his PFLP group have long been out of the headlines, surpassed in importance by newcomers like the Islamist group Hamas, not to mention overshadowed in terms of international exploits by the likes of al-Qaeda. But as the pioneer of airplane hijacking, Habash became a godfather of Middle East terrorism in his day. Given the obsession with "Islamic" terrorism, thanks to Osama, it's interesting that Habash, and his partner in crime Wadia Haddad, were Orthodox Christians. There goes the theory that Islam equals terrorism.

I had the opportunity to meet Habash many times over the years, first in Damascus, then later in Algeria and Tunisia. Already in the '80s he had been partially paralyzed by a stroke. Yet he could work up quite a passion and anger giving a speech or a press conference. When I saw him, he was always rather grandfatherly. Once I had been taken to some rendezvous point where he would arrive after me for security reasons--for much of his life, the Israelis sought to capture or kill him. He walked in, greeted me, and sitting down at a table he motioned that he'd like to take off his tweed sports jacket. "May I?" he asked politely.

But make no mistake, Habash was a revolutionary ideologue who could justify violence in the name of his cause. He damaged that cause immeasurably with all the killing and law-breaking--many of the hijacks were gambits to extort money to pay the PFLP's bills--and by connecting it to world revolution backed by the Soviet Union. For many years the PFLP's offices, camps and hideouts were frequented by folks like Carlos the Jackal, even Che Guevara, as well as terrorists from the Italian Red Brigades, the German Baeder-Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army. Many Palestinians themselves asked, What has this got to do with liberating Palestine?

Habash was a fierce opponent of the late Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah group at the time commanded the support of the vast majority of Palestinians. Habash believed in links with revolutionary forces throughout the Arab countries and the world, judging that only such solidarity could muster enough power to overthrow a regional political order dominated by the U.S. and Israel. Arafat, by contrast, believed the Palestinians' strength and indeed only hope for survival let alone independence was dependence on themselves alone. Habash's minority view never had a chance of succeeding, but it did help restrict Arafat's political flexibility. What nobody ever disputed, however, was Habash's patriotism. That is why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a three-day period of mourning in the Palestinian territories.

As history moves on, Habash's PFLP has all but disappeared, and Arafat's Fatah, now led by Abbas, may be in the midst of splintering beyond recognition. At the moment, the field is open to the new Palestinian ideologues, the Islamists. You get the feeling this conflict may last a long time, don't you?

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo