Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 4)
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- Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 4)
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The Assassination of Abu Jihad
In an attempt to put down the uprising in occupied Palestine, the
Zionist state committed a horrendous new crime, murdering Khalil
Al Wazir (Abu Jihad), deputy commander of the PLO’s armed
forces and head of the PLO committee for the affairs of the occupied
homeland.
In the early morning of April 16th, a
group of thirty Mossad agents sur-
rounded Abu Jihad’s house near Tunis.
Eight of the Israeli secret service squad
entered the house, murdered three
bodyguards and emptied their
magazines into the body of the great
Palestinian leader. In the spirit of the
heroic Palestinian people, Abu Jihad,
upon hearing the disturbance, had
taken his pistol to confront the enemy
forces. The Mossad operatives riddled
his body with about 80 bullets, in the
presence of his wife and son.
Hours after the murder, interna-
tional news reports revealed that the
operation was carried out by the
Mossad, having been approved by the
Israeli inner cabinet, including Yitzhak
Shamir and Shimon Peres. It was also
clear, as pointed out by PLO Chairman
Yasir Arafat, that the Israeli leaders’
decision was taken with the support of
the Reagan Administration. While the
State Department later issued a general
condemnation of the assassination,
‘Israel’ as the perpetrator was not
named. The US subsequently blocked
the attempt to name ‘Israel’ in the
Security Council’s condemnation of the
killing and the violation of Tunisian
territory.
This new crime punctuates a long list
of crimes committed by the Zionist
state against the Palestinian people over
the years, inside and outside of
Palestine. This crime cannot but re-
mind of the brutal assassinations of
other Palestinian nationalist leaders
like Ghassan Kanafani, Basil Kubaisi,
‘Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan, Abu
Yusef Najjar, Walid Zaiter, Khaled
Nazzal and others.
Having been forced to realize the
important role of the PLO and of Abu
Jihad in particular, in directing the
Palestinian uprising, the Israeli leader-
ship thought that the murder of a leader
could halt the uprising. This attests to
the atmosphere of hvsteria prevailing in
the Israeli cabinet, blinding it to the
4
fact that the uprising is sustained by
one and a half million Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and a
well-organized, clandestine leadership
in the territories. True the murder of
Abu Jihad is a great loss to the Palesti-
nian people, due to the historical role
he played in the Palestinian revolution.
However, the murder only made the
Palestinian people reaffirm that their
will to continue the struggle will not be
broken.
The most immediate result of the
murder was three days of the most
militant demonstrations witnessed in
the course of the current uprising.
Twenty-three Palestinians were shot
dead by the Zionist troops in these
days, and over 500 injured. The United
National Leadership called for «turning
the days of mourning for Abu Jihad
into days of fire, rage and hell against
the Zionist enemy.» Throughout oc-
cupied Palestine, thousands confronted
the . Zionist soldiers, displaying
Palestinian flags and T-shirts with Abu
Jihad’s picture.
ZIONIST PLAN BACKFIRES
In a development not anticipated by
the Israeli cabinet, the murder of Abu
Jihad provided the setting for a recon-
ciliation between the PLO and Syria.
For several years now, progressive
forces on the Palestinian, Arab and in-
ternational level have been calling for
repairing the relations between the
PLO, the vanguard of the Palestinian
people, and Syria, the sole Arab front-
line state opposing the imperialist
plans. In a positive gesture, Syrian
President Hafez Al Assad allowed Abu
Jihad to be buried in Syria where over
half a million people accompanied the
martyr’s body to the grave, in an
overwhelming demonstration of
Palestinian national unity and deter-
mination to continue the struggle.
A high-ranking PLO and Fatah
delegation came to Syria for the funeral
and began discussions with the Syrian
leadership. A few days later, PLO
Chairman Arafat visited Syria for the
first time since 1983. This opened the
door for restoring relations.
The murder of Abu Jihad elicited
worldwide condemnation of the Zionist
state with a few notable exceptions such
as the Reagan Administration and the
South African regime. The murder of
Abu Jihad took place less than a month
after the apartheid regime’s murder of
Dulcie September, ANC representative
in France, Switzerland and Luxem-
bourg. Both these murders give new
proof as to who the real terrorists are.
In a communique addressed to the
Palestinian people upon the murder of
Abu Jihad, Comrade George Habash,
General Secretary of the PFLP, stated,
«By killing Abu Jihad, ‘Israel’ wanted
to transfer the battle outside Palestine,
thinking that they could defeat the
uprising and the revolution. But they
Abu Jihad’s family at his funeral
nS
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- Democratic Palestine : 29
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