From a May 2000 Al-Jazeera interview with the late Abu Ali Mustafa, the then leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as translated and posted on the PFLP’s own website.
Al-Jazeera: ...[Up to the last moment] George Habash kept declaring that the armed struggle must be escalated, because the only solution to the Palestinian problem is the destruction of Israel. ...Is this Habash's personal position or does it reflect the policy of the PFLP?
Mustafa: ...Habash expressed the positions of the PFLP. …The political platform of the PFLP speaks in the clearest way about the strategic goal of the Palestinian people's struggle and about the use of all means, including armed violence…
Al-Jazeera: Meaning that today the PFLP still believes in the armed struggle...
Mustafa: This is one-hundred percent true. We believe the conflict and the struggle against Israel is a strategic [principle] that is not subordinated to any consideration. Even if there are circumstances of talks about peace and a settlement we see them as neither peace nor a settlement. We believe the Palestinian people, both in the Diaspora and [in the territories] under occupation, have the right to struggle using all means, including the armed struggle, because we think the conflict is the constant [factor] while the means and tactics are the variables....
So let’s recap . . . the goal of the PLO is Israel’s destruction and any “peace process” is meaningless unless it facilitates a non-Israeli future.
No doubt such "unhelpful" rhetoric earned Mustafa the censure of his boss, the international man of peace, Nobel laureate Yasser Arafat. Indeed, Arafat appointed a relacement immediately after discovering Mustafa in possession of two Israeli helicopter launched air-to-surface missiles in his Ramallah office in August of last year.
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