The PFLP was said to have emerged from an Egyptian-sponsored programme designed to weaken other Arab governments and thereby strengthen the reputation of Egyptian President Nasser.
[12] The PFLP was led by former Arab-nationalist movement leader George Habash, but in April 1968 Ahmad Jibril split from this group to form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), which returned to the strongly pro-Syrian position of the earlier PLF.
Ultimately, this led to the re-emergence of the PLF after the organisation had broken up when Jibril's PFLP-GC followed Syria into the fight against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the Lebanese Civil War.
One of the main points of contention was the relationship with the PLO and Fatah, with some members critically supporting Arafat, while others participated in the rebellion against him.
In 1991, security circles suspected that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein supported both Fatah - Revolutionary Council and the PLF.
In addition to Abu Nidal and the PLF, the 1st of May organisation is also said to have operated from Baghdad; the city was considered ‘the secret PLO headquarters’.
[16] Iraq had also provided refuge for ten years to one of the perpetrators of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Sheikh Ahmed Jassin.
After the PLO signed the Oslo Agreement in 1994, which the PLF rejected, Abu Abbas turned away from terrorism and argued for the right of Israel to exist.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the PLF enjoys less popular support, with its main following drawn from the Lebanese refugee camps, where it reportedly sides with Fatah against various Syrian-backed groups.
[14] During the US-led Iraq War, Abu Abbas was captured by US special forces in April 2003 after intelligence tips in a suburb of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
During the night of 22 April 1979, four members of the PLF went ashore from Lebanon in a rubber dinghy and forcibly entered an apartment building.
However, crew members discovered them cleaning weapons, and the group then seized control of the ship, murdering an elderly wheelchair-dependent Jewish New Yorker, Leon Klinghoffer.
The United States could have brought its own charges against Abbas, although a criminal complaint filed against him in 1986 was dropped a short time later without an indictment.
However, the action was significant, in that the failure of Yasser Arafat to condemn this attack led to the United States backing out of the American–Palestinian dialogue that had begun in 1988.
Despite Arafat's official silence on the issue, the PLF suffered heavy internal criticism within the PLO, and Abu Abbas had to step down from his seat on the executive committee.
[30] In May 2002, a man got out of a taxi in the market square of Netanya – according to eyewitness reports, he was wearing an Israeli army uniform – and detonated an explosive device filled with nails.
The Abu Dhabi television station reported that the radical Palestinian Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for the attack.
According to the Israeli daily newspaper ‘Ha'aretz’, the radical Islamic group Hamas has also claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.
[31] In January 2005, an explosive device weighing around 130 kilograms was detonated near an Israeli military base in the Gaza Strip, at the Karni crossing on the border with Israel.