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Abu Ali Mustafa
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Abu Ali Mustafa , (1938 – August 27, 2001), the kunya-style nom de guerre of Mustafa Alhaj, was the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from July 2000 until he was killed by Israeli forces the following year.
Abu Ali Mustafa was born in 1938, in the northern West Bank town of Arrabah, the son of a farmer. In 1955 he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), and two years later was arrested by the Jordanian authorities for his political activities.
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Abu Ali Mustafa , (1938 – August 27, 2001), the kunya-style nom de guerre of Mustafa Alhaj, was the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from July 2000 until he was killed by Israeli forces the following year.
Abu Ali Mustafa was born in 1938, in the northern West Bank town of Arrabah, the son of a farmer. In 1955 he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), and two years later was arrested by the Jordanian authorities for his political activities. On his release in 1961, he took charge of the ANM's military operations in the northern West Bank. Following the Israeli capture of the West Bank in the Six-Day War, he left the West Bank and spent 32 years mainly in Damascus and Jordan.
Abu Ali joined George Habash and other left-wing members of the ANM in establishing the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1967, and became a leading member of the new organisation. He was also a prominent member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation rising to become a member of its ruling Executive Committee. He was for a long time deputy to George Habash's leadership of the PFLP.
In September 1999 he returned to the West Bank under a deal struck between Yasser Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. In July 2000 he was elected as the new general secretary of the PFLP after Habash retired.
He was killed in a targeted assassination by two rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he sat at his desk in Ramallah on August 27,2001. Over 50,000 mourners attended his funeral.
At the time, he was the most senior Palestinian political leader to have been killed by Israel. The PFLP subsequently renamed their armed wing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. He was succeeded as Secretary General by Ahmad Saadat.
He was married with three daughters and two sons.
The PFLP is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Israel and many western states. Israel held Mustafa personally responsible for 10 different car-bomb attacks taken by the PFLP during his time as general secretary (in Jerusalem, Or-Yehuda, Yehud, and Haifa) and other shootings.
In an interview with Al Jazeera shortly before his assassination, he said:
"We believe the Palestinian people, both in the Diaspora and under occupation, have the right to struggle using all means, including the armed struggle, because we think the conflict is the constant, while the means and tactics are the variables".
Asked about the risk of assassination at Israeli hands he said:
"We all are targeted as soon as we begin to be mobilised. We do our best to avoid their guns, but we are living under the brutal Zionist occupation of our lands, and its army is only a few metres away from us. Of course we must be cautious, but we have work to do, and nothing will stop us".
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