George Habash

George Habash (Arabic: جورج حبش, romanized: Jūrj Ḥabash), also known by his laqab "Al-Hakim" (Arabic: الحكيم, romanized: Al-Ḥakīm, lit. 'The Wise Man or The Doctor'; 1 August 1926 – 26 January 2008), was a Palestinian politician and physician who founded the Marxist–Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Habash was born in Lydda, Mandatory Palestine in 1926. In 1948, 19-year-old Habash, a medical student at the American University of Beirut, went to his home town of Lydda during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, when the people of the city and his family were driven out in what became known as the Lydda Death March that led to the death of his sister. In 1951, after graduating first in his class from medical school, Habash worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and ran a clinic in Amman. He later relocated to Syria and Lebanon.

In 1967, after being sidelined in the Palestine Liberation Organization by Yasser Arafat, he founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist movement which opposes the existence of Israel and advocates for a single democratic and secular state in the entire region. In the 1970 Dawson's Field hijackings, Habash masterminded the hijackings of four Western airliners to Jordan, which led to the Black September conflict, and his subsequent exile to Lebanon. He remained opposed to a two-state solution even after the PLO signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993. He resigned as secretary general of the PFLP due to ill health in 2000, and died after a heart attack in 2008.