THIS refers to the death of comrade George Habash, the founder and former secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), reported briefly in Dawn in its Jan 27 issue.

The PFLP represents the only progressive, grassroots component within the Palestinian struggle.

Habash's experience with the defeat of Nasserist ideology in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 correctly led him to deduce that the only way a state armed to the teeth with American weapons and helped by the impotency of US client regimes in the Arab world was to utilise the well-established principle of armed struggle, well-documented in almost all the national liberation struggles in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, whether it was the French maquis, the Algerians against the French or the Vietnamese against the Americans.

Those in the West who unjustly criticise Habash and the PFLP's tactics are in bed with the same pro-colonial and pro-imperialist forces who never wanted the French to be free from Vichy, or the Algerians from the French or the Vietnamese from American occupation.

George Habash was the only giant amongst all the mediocrities left by Yasser Arafat's tragic death. Arafat's successors are all a pack of grovellers. Habash was in fact the only Palestinian leader who enjoyed a moral stature equal to Arafat because of his uncompromising politics and personal integrity, and that too from the left.

Arafat unquestioningly submitted and agreed to whatever the Israelis and Americans told him, which Habash opposed. The presence of the PFLP under the umbrella of Fatah is also proof to detractors of the struggle who always painted the Palestinians as fanatical jihadis. The PFLP is Marxist, secular and believes in a bi-national state for both Arabs and Jews.

In fact, he wanted an end to the client states in the region and realised that the Palestinian struggle was not an end in itself but a front for the eventual liberation of the entire Arab Middle East from the yoke of the Israeli-American protectorate status imposed upon it. Such is his stature that Palestinians from as diverse sides of the political spectrum as Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas have condoled his death and praised his relentless sacrifices for the Palestinian cause.

One only needs to look at what happened after the Gazans broke through the wall with Egypt. The only way to halt this is principled guerilla war which will make Israel ungovernable and make the regime in Tel Aviv come to its senses.

I believe that future events in Palestine will vindicate Habash's turn after 1967 to armed struggle and confirm him as one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th century in the lineage of Fidel Castro, Ahmed Ben Bella, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong

RAZA NAEEM

Lahore