Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations


The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations or Special Operations or Special Operations Group was an organisation led by the Palestinian radical Wadie Haddad.

Relationship to the PFLP and other organisations

Haddad had been a leading member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, which was one of the groups that came together to found the Popular [Front for the Liberation of Palestine] in late 1967. He oversaw its Special Apparatus, which was responsible for so-called external operations - attacks conducted outside the borders of historic Palestine. The Dawson's Field hijackings, organised by Haddad, were held within the PFLP to have provoked the Black September crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jordan, and Haddad was extensively criticized, especially by the organisation's left. At a central committee meeting in early November 1970, the PFLP agreed to suspend external operations in general and the tactic of airplane hijacking specifically.
Haddad was later instructed to brief the whole PFLP leadership before conducting further external operations, but he refused to do so, saying that he would liaise only with George Habash, and to a lesser extent with three other senior figures. Haddad paused hijackings for more than a year, but defied the moratorium by organising the hijack of Lufthansa Flight 649 in February 1972. In reaction, the PFLP's third general conference on 7 March 1972 voted to dissolve the Special Apparatus and expel Haddad. Haddad continued to be friendly with Habash, however, and channeled substantial funds to the PFLP over the following three years.
According to Leila Khaled, Haddad was ultimately expelled from the PFLP only in 1976, after the PFLP-EO hijacked an Air France plane and forced the crew to land it at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Khaled has said that Haddad maintained relationships with some PFLP members until his death in 1978.
Hadad cooperated with non-PFLP organizations such as the Abu Nidal Organization, the West German Revolutionary Cells and the Japanese Red Army. He also employed his PFLP protégé, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who remains imprisoned in France.

Death

Wadie Haddad died in 1978, in East Berlin, East Germany. This was first reported as being from leukaemia, and later from possible poisoning by Mossad. According to the book Striking Back, published in 2006, Haddad was assassinated by the Mossad, which had sent the chocolate-loving Haddad Belgian chocolates coated with a slow-acting and undetectable poison which caused him to die several months later. "It took him a few long months to die", Klein said in the book.

Splinter groups