George Habash dies in Amman at 82
The Palestinian ambassador to Jordan, Atallah Khairy, said Habash was hospitalised in Amman 10 days ago with heart problems and died shortly after 8 pm (1800 GMT).
Jordanian officials said he would be buried in Amman on Monday or Tuesday.
Habash stepped down as head of the Damascus-based PFLP in July 2000 after having led the leftist faction which is a key component of the Palestine Liberation Organisation for more than 30 years.
He had been living in Jordan, the homeland of his wife, after an illness forced his retirement from political life.
Habash was a fierce opponent of the policy of compromise of PLO Chief Arafat, ruling out a normalisation of ties with the Zionist regime and accusing him of making too many concessions.
He opposed Arafat's 1993 Oslo autonomy deal and refused to return to the Palestinian territories after the launch of autonomy in 1994, while insisting on the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes in the occupied Palestine.
He graduated from the American university of Beirut in 1951 as a paediatrician, and the next year he founded the Srab Nationalist Movement (ANM), which aimed at unifying the whole Arab world to confront the Zionist regime.
At the same time he worked in a dispensary in Amman until 1957 when he was forced to go underground as a result of his political activity, and moved to Damascus where he stayed from 1958 to 1963, before moving to Beirut.
He founded the PFLP, advocating "popular armed resistance," in December 1967, six months after the six-day war in which the Zionist regime usurped East al-Qods, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Married, and the father of two daughters, Habash moved to the Syrian capital in 1982, when the Zionist regime's invasion of Lebanon drove all Palestinian factions from Beirut where he had established his headquarters.
Habash was born in 1925 in the Palestinian town of Lydda, now in the Zionist-usurped areas and dubbed as Lod.
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