The Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a secular, Leninist Palestinian faction, founded in 1967 by Dr. George Habash, its former secretary general, and Mustafa Al-Zubari, known as "Abu Ali Mustafa," among other Arab nationalists. In 1968, the PFLP joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and has since been the second-largest faction in the organization.
The PFLP was best known for armed aircraft-hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also notable for being the first faction to kill a first-tier Israeli official, when it claimed responsibility for the assassination in Jerusalem of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
The PFLP openly calls for the development of a comprehensive plan to escalate and develop forms of revolutionary violence against the Israeli enemy. It rejects the Oslo Accords and calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. It considers both the Fatah-led government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip illegal, since neither has held elections for years.
On October 8, 1997, the group was designated by the U.S. government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and was likewise designated a terrorist group by the European Union, Canada, and Japan.
Official Website, Accounts On Telegram, Instagram
Following Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the PFLP has been participating in the war and has been heavily invested in a social media effort to justify violence and to counter the Israeli and U.S. stances on the conflict.
The PFLP has constantly been calling for targeting U.S. interests, embassies, and military bases in the region, saying the U.S. is the "spearhead of the aggression" in the Gaza Strip.
The PFLP operates an official website – pflp.ps – where it publishes statements, videos, news updates, and articles. It also maintains an active presence on Telegram, where the group's Central Media Department disseminates the content posted on the official website. The PFLP's accounts on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube, as listed on the website, are inactive or inexistent.
A MEMRI JTTM lookup of the website indicated it is hosted in Germany and produced an internet protocol (IP) address in Hessen, Germany.
The PFLP's military wing, the Martyr Abu 'Ali Mustafa Brigades, also operates a separate Telegram channel, focused on posting claims of responsibility for sniper operations and the firing of rockets and mortars targeting Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip, focusing on the Jabaliya Camp, as part of "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood."
Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the PFLP's channel on Telegram issued hundreds of press releases, videos of operations, and posters threatening to continue military action until Israel is "defeated."
The PFLP's Lebanon Bureau operates an account on Instagram with 769 followers, in which it glorifies the "heroic" journey of the Palestinian factions and documents the course of the Israel-Hamas war by the PFLP and other Palestinian factions, as well as by Lebanese Hizbullah.
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