The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (Arabic: الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين – القيادة العامة) or PFLP-GC is a Palestinian nationalist militant organisation based in Syria.
Jibril decided that Hawatmeh's theorizing was chafing the PFLP and producing an organization of impotent intellectuals, and declared as such when he formed the General Command.
Habash, he stated, had become a puppet to the professors of the exile, the elite among the refugees who were well-educated and wealthy, yet preached class revolution to the masses in the camps.
Jibril still used iron discipline to keep his fighters loyal and professional, and the General Command's insurgents were as a result for decades considered the best trained of any of the Palestinian guerrilla groups.
[citation needed] From 1970 to 1973, the group targeted a number of aircraft; typically having members seduce single young women and promise them a life of adventure and love – often while getting them addicted to drugs – before asking them to carry some cash and a mysterious package onto a flight to Tel Aviv.
While Fatah absorbed enormous casualties in the 1982 Lebanon War, the General Command succeeded in surviving, and at the end retained most of its previous manpower.
[citation needed] In one of its most famous attacks, a PFLP-GC guerrilla landed a motorized hang glider (apparently supplied by Libya)[21] near an Israeli army camp near Kiryat Shemona in Northern Israel on 25 November 1987.
[25] Following the rise of Hamas in the 1987–1991 First Intifada among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jibril found an able ally in resisting the trend started by Fatah leader Yasser Arafat toward a negotiated settlement to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
By that time, the Rejectionist Front was composed primarily of leftist groups, among them the PFLP, DFLP, General Command, PLF, and numerous other small factions.
The only group that waged uninterrupted attrition against Arafat was the Fatah Revolutionary Council led by maverick hardliner Sabri al-Banna (better known as Abu Nidal), who was viewed by other Palestinian organizations as not so much a guerrilla as a pure criminal with no higher goal than deposing the moderates at the head of the PLO.
Though many Palestinians still were opposed to compromising on the principle of defeating Israel by armed struggle, the existing groups could not channel their desires, as many of them were led by the elite among the exile population, who were detached from the reality of the refugee camps, be they in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan.
Many leaders of Palestinian groups lived in luxurious accommodations throughout the Eastern Bloc, Europe, or various Arab states, especially Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
Jibril uniquely insisted on living in a specially designed security bunker in the Lebanon mountains, a hilly terrain that was more attuned to the image of a guerrilla leader than Arafat's mansions in Tunis.
Allegedly angered by the PFLP-GC's refusal to take part in the protests and seen as the Assad regime's enforcer in the camp, thousands of mourners burnt down its headquarters in Yarmouk.
The rebels included the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a group made up of Palestinians, called Liwa al-Asifa or Storm Brigade.
However, a spokesman for the pro-rebel Palestine Refugee Camp Network said, "the implementation of the truce has been problematic" because of "intermittent" government shelling of Yarmouk and clashes on its outskirts.
[38][39][40] After the fall of the Assad regime in 2024, the Syrian transitional government demanded that all Palestinian armed groups in Syria disarm themselves, dissolve their military formations, and instead focus on political and charitable work.
[42] From 21 to 24 December, the Lebanese Armed Forces peacefully occupied most of the PFLP-GC's remaining bases in Lebanon, mainly those at the villages of Sultan Yacoub and Hechmech.