After a busy march in the face of Israel and suffering with disease, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - the General Command - and its General Secretary, Ahmed Jibril, died on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Damascus Hospital in the Syrian capital at the age of 83.

As the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian President and Chairman of the Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, called him, so did the Hamas movement, which Gabriel was credited with liberating its late founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from captivity in the “Galilee Deal” for the exchange of prisoners in 1985.

Birth and upbringing

Ahmed Jibril (Abu Jihad) was born in 1938 in the village of Yazour on the outskirts of Jaffa, which was abandoned during the catastrophe of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, on occupied Palestinian lands.

Gabriel was born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, then immigrated with his family to Syria in 1948, where he settled in the city of Quneitra with his uncles.

Until the age of ten, Jibril grew up in his village, and he never forgot the British army's raids on it during the occupation (1920-1948), before the events of the Nakba that forced him to emigrate, according to an interview with Al-Jazeera in 2005.

Study and training

After obtaining a high school diploma in scientific specialization in Damascus in 1956, he moved to Cairo and joined the Military College and graduated in 1959. Therefore, Ahmad Jibril is considered one of the few Palestinian leaders who received an academic military training.

After graduating, he worked as a lieutenant, then an officer in the engineering corps in the Syrian army, until his release in 1963.

intellectual orientationsات

Ahmed Jibril reckons with the nationalist trend, and believes in the armed struggle to liberate Palestine.

political experience

During his studies in Egypt, he came into contact with the General Union of Palestinian Students, where the idea of ​​armed struggle to liberate Palestine began to crystallize.

He founded the Palestine Liberation Front in 1959, after the Algerian Liberation Front, in whose ranks he fought against French colonialism (1830-1962).

After that, it merged with several nationalist and leftist currents, and they established the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was led by George Habash, while Jibril led its military wing.

But he separated from the George Habash front to establish in 1968 his own faction, the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command", as a left-wing nationalist movement whose Secretary-General became for 53 years until his death.

Jibril's movement carried out qualitative operations against the Israeli occupation, and excelled in kidnapping Israeli soldiers and exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners.

In 1978 and 1982, Jibril lived through the Israeli occupation army’s invasion of Lebanon, and his forehead captured an Israeli soldier in 1978, and 3 others in 1983.

Jibril oversaw two prisoner exchange deals between his front and Israel: "Al-Nawras" in 1979, under which 76 Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for the first soldier.

The second deal was the "Galil" deal in 1985, during which 3 Israeli soldiers exchanged 1,150 prisoners held by Israel, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas.

The front also carried out military operations against Israeli targets, including the "Khalas" operation near the settlement of "Kiryat Shmona" (northern Israel) in 1974, which was carried out by 3 of the front's dead, a Palestinian, a Syrian and an Iraqi.

Syrian Revolution

Jibril has faced many criticisms. Since 2011, he has sided with the Syrian regime against the popular revolution, and his front has even participated in the fight against the revolution's factions.

Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command has been one of the most brutal non-Syrian military arms in killing and oppressing Palestinians and Syrians.

The Front carried out the mission of spying on individuals and institutions opposed to the Syrian regime, and the Yarmouk camp witnessed its actions, and it is still there, as the Front has imposed a siege on it since approximately 2012, and it is now participating in most of the battles that the Syrian regime is waging in the areas surrounding Damascus.

Alliances and quarrels

Jibril's biography was linked to his strategic alliance with Syria, Libya and Iran, and his conflict with the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

And his experience in Syria went through brief periods, from serving in its army, to being thrown into its prisons in 1962, 1964, and 1966.

Jibril's Front participated in the operations of Tel al-Za'atar camp in 1976 in Lebanon, besieging the camp and destroying it with missiles that killed thousands of Palestinians. It caused the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.

In 1993, he left Lebanon to return to Syria, then moved to Iran in 1996, and then returned to Syria again in 2002.

After that, Jibril gradually returned to participating in the Palestinian reconciliation meetings, and signed the national reconciliation document emanating from the Cairo meeting in 2011.

He was unable to participate in the meeting of the general secretaries-general of the Palestinian factions in September 2020, due to health reasons.

Until his death, Jibril remained opposed to the approach of settlement and negotiations with Israel, which was adopted by the PLO.

Assassination and kidnapping attempts

Israel considers Ahmed Jibril one of its staunchest enemies, and it has tried to kidnap or assassinate him several times, but it has failed in those attempts.

In addition to the Mossad's attempts to assassinate him, Jibril was subjected to numerous assassination attempts and kidnappings by all parties in the Lebanese arena, including Palestinians, Lebanese and Arabs.

He also escaped arrest after Israel hijacked a plane that was heading from Libya to Syria in 1986, where he apologized for not joining this flight at the last moments, according to his testimony to Al Jazeera.

In 2002, the Mossad succeeded in assassinating his son, Jihad Jibril, commander of the front's military wing, by blowing up his car in Beirut.