Back in the 1970s, Marxist, Maoist, and Nasserist militant groups led the Palestinian cause. They drew attention with airplane hijackings and terrorist attacks, launched strikes on Israel from Lebanon’s border, and created revolutionary icons like hijacker Leila Khaled, who captivated even some European youth. Western terror groups, such as Germany’s Red Army Faction (RAF) and Japan’s Red Army, journeyed to Palestinian training camps to learn about explosives and firearms in the name of world revolution.
Today, little remains of that era. Instead of the self-styled Arab Marxists with mustaches and bell-bottoms, it is now the Islamists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militia who wage war against the despised Israel. Many leftists in the West cheer on these religious fanatics, contorting intellectual arguments to cast them as social revolutionaries.
Times have indeed changed, even old leftists in the Middle East say. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) now reside in Beirut, where in the 1970s Yasir Arafat and other secular Palestinian fighters held court, building a veritable state-in-exile in Lebanon’s capital. But Arafat has long been dead, and in Beirut, it’s no longer the Palestinians who are in charge, but the devout Shiites of Hezbollah. In Gaza, too, the left no longer operates independently but alongside Hamas. “Hamas has more resources and is therefore far stronger. But we form a united front,” says a PFLP representative. Time and again, members of the remaining Palestinian leftist organizations declare that their troops in Gaza are now fighting side by side with the Islamists. After all, they say, the liberation of the homeland is the primary goal, rendering ideological differences insignificant.
However, this show of unity cannot conceal the long-standing struggles of the leftist Palestinian groups, which are left with few options other than to join forces with their Islamist class enemies. The PFLP, the most significant leftist faction, won only three seats in the Palestinian parliament in the last elections in 2006. Once, the PFLP held the position that Hamas occupies today, as the largest and most feared militant Palestinian force. Led by Christian pediatrician George Habash, the group was founded by disillusioned pan-Arab nationalists who no longer believed in an Arab victory over Israel after the defeat in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Outwardly, the PFLP – which attracted not only students and intellectuals but also many poor Palestinians from Lebanon and Jordan’s bleak refugee camps – appeared strictly Marxist. It aimed to eliminate not only Israel but also all pro-Western regimes in the region. Yet, the hoped-for dawn over Arabia never came. Instead, the left soon faced a new rival. At the end of the 1970s, radical Islam began its triumphant rise. Driven by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, representatives like Hamas took the lead in the fight against Israel. Unlike the Islamists, who suddenly received funding from Tehran or the Gulf, the left lost Soviet support after its collapse.
But the lack of funds was not the only reason for the decline. Arab societies were only marginally receptive to Marxist theory. People simply joined the strongest group or wherever friends and family were active. The brutal infighting within Palestinian factions also did little to help. For instance, during the chaos of the Lebanese Civil War, the PFLP-GC fought Yasir Arafat’s Fatah. Many leftist illusions were shattered in the bloody turmoil of the Cedar State, for which the armed Palestinians also bore responsibility.
To this day, the Palestinian left remains fragmented. Besides the PFLP and PFLP-GC, there is the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and a variety of other smaller groups. But in the desolate refugee camps south of Beirut, young men cheer for Hamas or Islamic Jihad instead. The Islamists, they say, are fighting, while the left only talks. Nevertheless, there are still young leftists. They are well-educated and secular – yet they support the conservative Islamist Hamas in its fight against Israel, whose existence they reject. They envision a democratic, secular, and socialist state of Palestine. But is such a thing even possible with Islamist Hamas? They say this question will be resolved together after liberation. Time and again, young people emphasize that, despite ideological differences, they can cooperate with Hamas as a Palestinian national movement.
However, the left in the Middle East has been bitterly disappointed on this topic more than once. In the Iran of the 1970s, they fought alongside the mullahs against the Shah, only to end up in the torture chambers of revolutionary leader Khomeini shortly after. In Lebanon, too, leftist Palestinians were gunned down by former allies in the past. Hamas, which currently leads the fight in Gaza, does not harbor solely affection for its leftist friends, either.
