I spoke with Francesco Saverio Leopardi of Ca’Foscari University of Venice about his recently released book ‘The Palestinian Left and Its Decline: Loyal Opposition’.

We go through the recent history of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, from 1982 to 2007. We go through its complicated role(s) in various Arab countries and even more complicated relationship with other Palestinian groups, especially the PLO, as well as some lessons to draw from this group’s experience.

As with all conversations I have, this one was intended to be broader than its specific topic.

Hopefully by the end of this episode you will have a basic understanding of: the PFLP’s history, tensions within the Arab left, the role of Israel and the Assad regime in destroying parts of the Arab left, and even a brief comparative analysis of the Egyptian communist movement and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

I even made a loose comparison between the experience of the PFLP and that of the Free Syrian Army just to challenge my guest, include a more comparative analysis in our conversation, and to let him expand on what he called ‘the opposition-integration dilemma’.

Of course, this is a conversation around a book so we couldn’t get into all of the details that Francesco Saverio Leopardi explores in ‘the Palestinian left and its decline: local opposition‘. 

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Music by Tarabeat

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Transcript prepared by Yusra Bitar and Antidote Zine:

I am not sure whether a revival of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is possible, but what I am sure is that the Palestinian national movement needs a progressive option, a progressive platform.

Joey Ayoub: This is a conversation with Francesco Saverio Leopardi about his recently released book, The Palestinian Left and its Decline: Loyal Opposition. It’s a conversation that is obviously rather academic, but we tried our best to make sure that we keep a broader audience in mind. You don’t have to know much about the Palestinian left—or the Arab left for that matter—to find this episode interesting, I hope. As with all these episodes, the intention isn’t only to have a deep exploration into a particular topic, although that is partly what we’ve done here. I am convinced that regardless of where you come from or what your background is, you’ll find something in this conversation that might apply to your own context. If that is the case, I would genuinely be very interested to hear about it. Enjoy this episode and thank you for listening.

Saverio Leopardi: My name is Saverio Leopardi. I am a research fellow at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, where I work on contemporary history of the Middle East and North Africa, with a special focus on Palestine and Algeria.

JA: The topic of our conversation will be on Palestine and on your latest book called The Palestinian Left and its Decline: Loyal Opposition. Let’s start with a general background. How did you come to do this research? What is the book about? How would you pitch it to our listeners? Let’s start with that.

SL: My book is on the history of the marginalization process that the main Palestinian leftist faction—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—experienced between 1982 and 2007. It is the result of a research process that started almost a decade ago. I was working on my masters dissertation, and I wanted to do something on the Palestinian national movement.

While doing my readings, I noticed two interesting aspects. One is that historiography on the Palestinian national movement tended to neglect the mid-1980s as a period, which is often described as a very complicated period, full of division within the Palestinian national movement. The other aspect is that there was no comprehensive look at the decline of the Palestinian left, in particular the decline of the PFLP. I saw that there was a correlation between the decline of the PFLP and this particular period of Palestinian history. This is what prompted me to look into the marginalization of the Palestinian left, trying to locate its origins in a time that is usually neglected, instead of just starting from the usual timeframe (for instance the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Oslo Accords).

Concerning the research, I started in the most classical way possible when it comes to history, because I decided to rely on reading documentation. One of the perks of studying the Palestinian national movement is that the diversity that was always characterized the PLO (and the whole Palestinian national movement for that matter) entailed that each faction produced a huge amount of documents, and each faction had its own mouthpiece.

In the PFLP’s case, it was Al-Hadaf magazine, which was founded by Ghassan Kanafani in the late 1960s. Al-Hadaf had all kinds of documents: official communications, statements from the leaders, interviews, replies to other political figures, both Palestinians and Arabs. These represented the bulk of my sources, but I also used other kinds of documents produced by other Palestinian factions, the PLO, or Arab states—or really any political figure or entity which had a role in the events that I approached.

But I also needed to formulate a good methodology to read all of these documents, because one of the risks that I immediately realized was that I risked becoming like an echo-chamber for the propaganda or the narrative of the PFLP, and I wanted to mitigate that risk. So I adopted a double method in my reading. On the one hand, I started to read these documents diachronically. I followed how the PFLP related to certain issues, how it behaved, and what positions it expressed along a certain timeframe so I could spot differences, changes, and, indeed, contradictions. At the same time, I added to this diachronic reading by reading documents produced by other factions or, as I said, Arab states or political figures in general, and a synchronic reading of the general literature of the Palestinian national movement, which is of course quite wide. This allowed me to mitigate this risk and also check what the real position of the PFLP was and how other factions responded to its position. This allowed me, I think, to preserve a good degree of objectivity as opposed to just repeating the PFLP’s narrative.

JA: Yes, for sure. I have read most of the book by now and I think you do that quite well.

SL: Thanks.

JA: One of the main theses in the book is that there is a sense that the PFLP should have been an obvious alternative to both the Palestinian National Authority [PNA] camp and the Islamists (Hamas is the biggest one, but there is also Islamic Jihad and others). So the question is why: why has the PFLP been marginalized? Can you trace the roots of its marginalization for us?

SL: First of all, when it comes to the idea that the PFLP should have been the alternative to these two camps, we should start by saying that the PFLP itself always described its political proposal as an alternative first to Fatah and subsequently to Hamas. Even the adoption of Marxist-Leninism in the late 1960s was related to this need to be distinguished from Fatah’s wider and more inclusive nationalism, which was not ideologically defined. So they presented themselves as an alternative.

Then, when it comes to the current situation and the impasse that the Palestinian national movement faced in 2007, we should look at the fact that we have today two main poles in Palestinian politics. We have two authorities concerned about preserving power over their enclaves, be it the Gaza strip or chunks of the West Bank, and two poles that have lost a great deal of legitimacy, if not all. They are unable today to really represent popular opinion and the Palestinian audience, not only in Palestine but also in the diaspora.

And they also just represent two versions of a conservative platform. One is Islamist and one is secular. I think the Palestinian national movement would benefit incredibly from a progressive agenda, from a party capable of proposing an analysis that takes class much more into consideration and bringing important issues back into the national debate. For instance, the role of Palestinians in the diaspora, which has been neglected since the Oslo Accords, or what kind of state should be built after liberation. Is liberation linked to the idea of a Palestinian state again? There are countless such issues.

The PFLP has had in, its history, the political capital to embody these kinds of progressive options, but it has lost this ability. It has been unable to really embody any credible progressive agenda at least since 2007, if not even earlier. In my study, I trace the beginning of this marginalization to the crises that the PFLP experienced after the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut due to the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which entailed the end of Palestinian sanctuary in the country. I locate the beginning of the marginalization to this specific period in Palestinian history because it entailed for the PFLP the inability to continue to perform its revolutionary role.

The PFLP always claimed to be the revolutionary option in the PLO, the one that was actually stating the correct nationalist line, but after 1982, it was unable to still have this revolutionary performance. When in Jordan, the PFLP and other Palestinian leftist organizations could call and act for the overthrowing of the Hashemite kingdom and the creation of a socialist state in Jordan, while in Lebanon, the collaboration with the Lebanese national movement meant that the PFLP was fighting for the end of confessionalism in the country. But after 1982, they lost this option. The armed struggle was really brutally ended, at least for the PFLP.

The PFLP always had an increasing problem in performing these revolutionary options which consecutively led to an increasing loss of credibility in its political proposal.

JA: This brings us to the subtitle of the book: Loyal Opposition. The PFLP was the main rival to Fatah within the PLO structure and yet they ascribed to what you call “loyal opposition.” Can you explain what that means exactly?

SL: Yeah, sure. This questions allows me to explain one of the main arguments I make to explain the decline of the Palestinian left and the PFLP in particular. “Loyal opposition” is a definition that has been used very often to describe the PFLP, but also other factions on the left such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Basically what it means is that the PFLP ascribed to some shared values around which all of the Palestinian factions actually gathered. For instance, the idea that Palestinian political action should be autonomous from interference Arab states, and that Palestinians should be at the vanguard of the fight for liberation, unlike in previous phases when, for instance, the pan-Arab option was the dominant one. The PFLP also believed, like other factions, in the need to respect the legality and the rule that regulated life within the PLO and its institutions. For instance, the idea that consensus should be reached before any major decision was taken was one of the most important principles to which the PFLP adhered.

But also, loyal opposition meant that the PFLP actually reaped some benefit from being integrated into the PLO structure—both political and material. The PLO provided an incredible platform from which to reach out to allies worldwide, and make its voice heard in a much wider way. But also the PFLP received funding by participating with the PLO, where Arab financing or financing from other sources were allocated to each faction according to a quota system.

These are some of the reasons that led the PFLP to be a loyal opposition and always seek to maintain integration in the PLO, even when there was a conflict that would lead to the PFLP withdrawing from certain institutions, such as the executive committee. But these at times could be in contradiction with the idea of being an alternative to Fatah, to be the real revolutionary option in the Palestinian national movement. The problem emerged after 1982 when the PFLP became unable to strike a balance between opposition and integration, which is what I call the opposition-integration dilemma. This inability to find a balance between these two contradictory priorities would lead to a pattern in its political agency which I define as policy fluctuation.

I draw this definition from an article on the PFLP, one of the few written by As’ad AbuKhalil in 1987, which used this definition to describe the PFLP orientation towards foreign partners. But actually this could be applied to all of PFLP’s policies. The PFLPs political agency started to fluctuate between these two main poles, and this led to a loss of credibility in its political proposal and in the loss of its effectiveness in its ability to actually influence the direction of the Palestinian national movement. Moreover, this opposition-integration dilemma also interacted with other controversial aspects of the PFLP’s policy-making, such as its relations with foreign allies such as Syria, or later on, the relation between the exiled PFLP leadership and the new emerging leadership in the occupied Palestinian territories that was playing an increasingly important role in the context of the First Intifada.

These sources of tensions produced policy fluctuations that contributed incredibly to the marginalization of the PFLP within the larger Palestinian national movement.

JA: In our pre-chat, I made this seemingly random comparison between the PFLP and the FSA—the Free Syrian Army—and we had a chat about it. I don’t think it is a very good comparison. Very different times, very different context, very different everything. But one thing that I find striking and think about a lot, especially in the past few years, since 2016, is the failure to reach a broader audience. You might call it a failure of PR in some ways, like not knowing how to reach an audience that did not already agree with you. The FSA has been critiqued and criticized—by supporters of the Syrian revolution as well—for not doing enough to appeal to minorities in the early years, when this would have been much more efficient. They tried to do it later on, but by then it was a bit too late.

With the PFLP, it’s different. It’s not the same thing. They did not have an Islamism issue. They didn’t have a religious conservatism issue. They had more of an issue, as you mentioned, with this tension between being an opposition while at the same time prioritizing being integrated within the PLO structure.

So let’s reflect a bit about this. What were some of your thoughts when I made that comparison? We can use this to transition to the PFLP’s relationship to foreign powers, as you mentioned, and especially Syria in this case. The follow up question will be the role of Israel, but I would be curious to ask you about the PFLP’s role within the Lebanese context as well. So let’s talk about the PFLP in its early years in the context of Lebanon, and by extension the relationship with Syria.

SL: You’re bringing up a lot—let’s see what we can do here.

Lebanon provided an opportunity for the PFLP to continue performing its revolutionary role. It is well known that the PFLP was more eager to participate directly in the fight led by the Lebanese national movement, this coalition of movements that wanted to end confessionalism in Lebanon—something that Arafat and Fatah were quite unwilling to do. At the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, Fatah wanted to have a proper relationship with all of the factions involved. Lebanon was an opportunity for the PFLP. It allowed the PFLP to reach a wide audience globally. Just think of the iconic interview that Kanafani gave in the PFLP’s bureau in Beirut.

But at the same time, the Lebanese experience, and the building of a quasi-state there, was also to a certain extent a trap for the whole of the Palestinian national movement, really, because it is in Lebanon that the PFLP and other factions went through the bureaucratization process, which would eventually kill the proper militant and revolutionary ethos that was informing the PFLP in its early years. This bureaucratization, the idea that revolution was becoming a job, actually impeded renewal in the PFLP when this was much needed, particularly in the 1980s and even more so after the outbreak of the First Intifada.

So yes, of course, the relation of the PFLP with Lebanon and its political arena is very controversial. Again, we can transition through Lebanon to the relation that the PFLP had with a country like Syria, which is one of the most, controversial relations in our politics—not only between the PFLP and Syria, but also between Syria and the whole of the Palestinian national movement. This is a relation that goes down to a personal individual level, to a factional level, and to an institutional level. Just think about the personal story of George Habash, who was arrested in Syria and then had to flee from Damascus because of conflict between the PLO and Syria which would put him at risk despite the PFLP having moved its headquarters to Damascus after 1982.

If we are to consider the relation between Syria and the Palestinian national movement and the Palestinian cause in general: today we tend to forget how contested and how controversial this relation was. In our chat before this interview, you brought up the 1976 invasion of Lebanon by Syria. We can also mention the backing that Syria gave to the Shi’a movement Amal during the so-called War of the Camps, in which Amal tried to get rid of the Palestinian armed presence in Beirut and the south of Lebanon by besieging the Palestinian refugee camp. And we have countless other occasions in which Syria was in conflict with the Palestinians.

But today, particularly on the left of the political spectrum, we see a trend in which Syria is simply put in the so-called “resistance camp.” This is really telling of one of the problems of the Arab left—and sometimes the global left and European left—because many on the official Arab left have been unable to go beyond the Cold War calculation, beyond the division into camps: one in which that the USA and Israel are the main imperialist forces, while anybody who is in the other camp is really the “resistance.” It doesn’t matter if it is Russian capitalists or local Islamists. They’re just resisting.

Of course, both Israel and the USA are still pushing hegemonic policies in the region, but so are Russia and Iran, just to give two examples. And really, the inability to go beyond this Cold War division is telling of the inability of a faction like the PFLP (but this is really relatable to all the Arab left, or at least the official Arab left) to formulate a new analysis of society. And by the way, in this analysis, class—which should be at the center of any progressive agenda—is really marginalized.

We started with the idea of comparing the PFLP and the FSA. This is a little bit of a jump into another topic, but the comparison is actually very challenging. It’s funny because it might be the only comparative terms where the leftist faction is less fragmented than its counterpart, which does not happen very frequently. But this suggestion made me think of the importance of having a proper counter-hegemonic platform to propose. This is why, I think, both factions like the PFLP and the Syrian Nation Coalition or the FSA were unable to gather consensus around their proposal.

In the case of the Syrian Nation Coalition, I think that divisions within this camp were central in the failure in the FSA to present a proper counter-hegemonic proposal to the Ba’athist state. The main division among all the division that we could spot was between the internal activists—who had created certain very interesting experiments like the Local Coordination Committees, which really were proposing a new way of doing politics as opposed to the authoritarian Ba’athist model—and the outside leadership which had a different view of what was happening in 2011 and about the Syrian revolution. They were really reading what was happening there as a possible second round of the uprising that occurred at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, one in which the Muslim Brotherhood was the dominant faction (but not the only one).

From the outside, they could not really understand the new dynamics of the Syrian uprising, and really just saw it as an occasion for revenge for what happened before. This played an incredible role, a central role, in preventing the Syrian National Coalition from putting forward a credible platform which could have had an appeal to minorities, as you said. This is very telling that you can have good values, you can have good propositions, financial backing, political backing from powers all over the world, but if you are unable to put forward a real counter-hegemonic cultural and political proposal, you are likely to fail in this endeavor.

JA: Yes, absolutely. You made the comparison better than the way I made it. Speaking of comparisons, in the book, you use two other examples that are not directly related to the PLO: the Egyptian Communist Movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK]. Can you expand a bit on that? Why did you choose these two? And what are some of the conclusions to draw from these comparisons?

SL: I decided to add this comparative chapter because first of all I wanted to test the arguments I made throughout the book. I wanted to see if concepts such as the opposition-integration dilemma could work in other contexts, and I wanted my book to be possibly relevant also for people outside Palestinian studies: anybody into the history of the global left, anybody interested in the history of national liberation movements, or interested in the controversial relation between Marxism and nationalism. I thought the Egyptian Communist Movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK really gave me the chance to do this.

Take the Egyptian Communist Movement—I refer in particular to the second wave of the movement, the one that participated in the Nasserist coup in the early 1950s, and the decades following. They went through some of the same dilemmas that the PFLP experienced: they were a leftist-Marxist movement that always prioritized the national cause; they saw nationalism as a way to reach the masses, because the issue of national emancipation was very popular in Egyptian politics of course. But in doing so they decided to play on the field set by other forces, in particular the Free Officers Movement which would come to power and become the dominant power in Egyptian politics.

This camp was culturally and politically dominated by the Nasserist option; this was what exposed the Egyptian Communist Movement to some of the same fluctuations that the PFLP also experienced. The Egyptian Communists always sought to integrate the dominant national bloc; they to a certain extent renounced putting forward their own alternative, counter-hegemonic platform; and they thought that by integration in the Nasserist regime they could influence the orientation of the regime.

But actually, if we look at Egyptian history, we see how it was really the contrary. The Nasserist regime was able to borrow tropes from Egyptian Marxists when it suited them best. For instance, after the failure of the experiment of the United Arab Republic, the Egyptian regime pushed the wave of Arab Socialism with much more strength, and borrowed ideas and intellectuals from the left. But when the left actually posed a danger, the Nasserist regime never hesitated to repress the Communists. This actually contributed to the decline of the second wave of Egyptian Communists.

Quite the contrary, the PKK was always able to maintain a radical, counter-hegemonic proposal while acting in a very diversified national movement just like the Palestinian national movement, one in which there were different ideas of Kurdish national liberation which were in open competition with each other. One of the key features of the PKK is that it was not born as a properly nationalist faction, unlike the PFLP, whose roots are to be traced back to the Arab nationalist movement. The PKK was born in the context of the humanist radical left in Turkey of the 1970s and this allowed the PKK to use the national issue as a way to mobilize its membership towards societal transformation—and, in later years, even towards individual transformation.

When the PKK experienced important crises, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of existing socialism, or the apprehension of Abdullah Öcalan, it was able to renew itself and abandon some of its main ideological tenants, such as Marxist-Leninism, and embrace a different but still radical agenda, such as anarchist municipalism or democratic confederalism. The PKK was then able to emancipate itself from the idea that national liberation equated to statehood. This was always the case for the PKK. Today the PKK is still able to get consensus around its platform and act in totally different contexts. Democratic confederalism is implemented both in southeastern Turkey, by participating in municipal elections and also in northeastern Syria, in Rojava. Of course, now the situation has changed. There are some military aspects that should be taken into account.

But nonetheless, the PKK in those years gathered local and international consensus and a good deal of support, particularly in Europe, while the PFLP was never able to do so. The PFLP always lacked the ideological elaboration of a faction like the PKK. Still today, the main ideological document, the founding principles of the PFLP are still those formulated in the late 1960s. There is a clear lack of re-elaboration, which is much needed. This doesn’t mean that all that was said in the 1960s has lost its meaning, but still, it is not credible that nothing has changed and no re-elaboration is needed.

The main conclusion is: for a radical progressive force to remain relevant, it has to reformulate its counter-hegemonic proposal to hope to continue to survive and be relevant in its own specific context and also regionally and globally.

JA: The last question is not easy either. The elephant in the room is obviously Israel, the PFLP’s main ideological enemy. The role of Israel towards Palestinians, especially in Lebanon is well known: the 1982 invasion, the invasion before that, the massacres that followed the 1982 invasion, and so on. But let’s assume not everyone knows the details, just to be fair to the audience and make this episode internally coherent. Can you speak about the role of Israel in weakening the PFLP—the invasion, the assassination of Kanafani, notably—and link it to some of the actions, even controversial actions, by the PFLP and its allies within the territories of historical Palestine?

SL: In my research, I wanted to focus on the PFLP response to global challenges. Of course, Israeli repression was one of those challenges. The Palestinian national movement always had to deal with Israeli repression. But I wanted to see how the PFLP responded subjectively to these challenges, rather than just ascribe the cause of its decline to external factors.

When it comes to Israel, this is made clear if we look at other Palestinian factions and how they acted. For instance, we know that Israel has resorted, throughout its history, to targeted assassination. You mentioned the killing of Ghassan Kanafani. But Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian faction, had to endure a higher degree of repression, especially in recent years. Assassinations were frequent for Hamas leaders; we could just remember Sheikh Yassin or other prominent leaders such as Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi or Yahya Ayyash. But Hamas has always been able to replace those leaders and renew its internal structure, something that the PFLP was never as good at.

When it comes to targeted assassination, they had a role in contributing to the decline of the PFLP if we look at the people who were actually killed. You mentioned Kanafani. Kanafani was probably the only real ideologue that the PFLP ever had. The PFLP was never famous for its ideological elaboration. It really took inspiration from political platforms all over the world, be it Maoism or what Che Guevara thought about revolutionary violence. The same can be said for Franz Fanon and so on. It would be really interesting to know what Kanafani would have thought about the major changes and the major issues that the PFLP had to face throughout its history. So this was really a huge blow to the PFLP, in my opinion.

Another example is the killing of Abu Ali Mustafa, the second secretary general of the PFLP. He was killed during an Israeli raid shortly after his return to Palestine. He was a figure that could really gather trans-factional consensus around himself. He was well-respected for his role in setting up the PFLP military apparatus, and when Israel killed him, this left the PFLP exposed to higher degree of internal fragmentation. No other personality could match him when it came to putting together a different orientation and a different vision. And as fragmentation worsened, we could begin speaking of different branches of the PFLP which do not operate under the same umbrella—especially today, with physical division.

In that sense, Israeli repression contributed to the decline of the PFLP. But again, it always comes back to the idea that the main problem is the inability of factions like the PFLP to respond to these challenges, and renew both its rank-and-file and leadership.

Same goes for some of the actions the PFLP carried out in its history. Again, it’s a huge jump, but while doing my research, I never really found a proper evaluation of what these operations meant for the PFLP—nor any substantial regrets. It’s a little bit controversial to present this to a public which is not really into the role that armed struggle had in the Palestinian national movement. What I can say is that at a certain point, the PFLP deemed these external operations—the most famous of which was the hijacking of planes in the 1970s—as not useful. These operations helped the PFLP popularize the Palestinian cause to a certain extent, but at times, when it relied to more extreme factions such as the Japanese Red Army, really it could not control the outcome. And this ultimately backfired.

This provided, at times, the excuse to Israel to hit hard in its retaliation. So probably one of the greatest mistakes was not formulating a proper strategy when it came to external operations: What kind of objectives should be hit? What kind of objectives are allowed to be on the list of the PFLP? Are Israeli civilians a target? Should they just limit themselves to military targets? Again, there was not a reevaluation of this story. I did not encounter it in the interviews or other documents that I read. This is telling of the PFLP’s inability to look at its past and reformulate its platform, and renew its vision and its views on its struggle.

Again, to go forward, to put forward a new political proposal, one has to really make an analysis of what happened—and how the PFLP got to the position it is experiencing today, one where the PFLP doesn’t really have any significant influence over the Palestinian national movement.

JA: Thank you for that answer. What can you tell us about the book that you didn’t have time to expand upon? We’ll sort of use it as the closing segment of the episode.

SL: The main idea behind this book was to contribute to the renewal of the academic and political debate about the Palestinian national movement. I really wanted to put forward some of the ideas and the issues that had been neglected in the last years. I really hope this could make a contribution in that sense and really could be a tip for a deeper conversation, and how a new progressive option could be enacted in the context of the Palestinian national movement.

I am not sure whether a revival of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is possible, but what I am sure is that the Palestinian national movement, as many other political realities in the world today, needs a progressive option, a progressive platform. The sooner the Palestinians—though this is really up to everybody—start considering how to renew this progressive option within their national movement, the better. There are many issues that are not addressed at all, and that would really benefit from a progressive take on those issues.

JA: Thanks a lot for your time, and good luck to you.

SL: Thanks for having me.