Nayef Hawatmeh

Nayef Hawatmeh was born in al-Salt, Jordan, in November 1935, into a large clan that is spread across Jordan, Palestine, and Syria.

He completed his high school education at al-Hussein College in Amman and then moved to Cairo to study medicine at Cairo University. However, he soon cut short his university studies for the next decade due to the demands of his nationalist political activism. He resumed his studies at the Beirut Arab University in the Lebanese capital, where he studied philosophy and sociology. There, he submitted a graduate thesis titled “Transformations within the Ranks of the Nationalist Movement, from a Broad Nationalism to Democratic Leftism.”

Hawatmeh joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) at an early age; its founding had been announced by George Habash at a general congress held in Amman in 1956. He rose through its leadership ranks, and after the coup against the nationalist government of Suleiman al-Nabulsi in Jordan in April 1957, he led the movement in Jordan and the West Bank. The ANM was subjected to persecution in Jordan, which forced it to turn to clandestine work. In February 1958, Hawatmeh was sentenced to death in Jordan because of his role in the movement.

Hawatmeh fled to Damascus and from there to Homs. From Homs, he led an armed convoy that marched on foot into Tripoli, Lebanon, to take part in the revolution that had broken out in July 1958 against the rule of President Camille Chamoun. He led the ANM in northern Lebanon, forming a united front with Prime Minister Rashid Karami and the Baathists.

After the conflict in Lebanon ended and the 14 July 1958 revolution in Iraq overthrew the Faisal monarchy and established a republic, Hawatmeh moved to Baghdad, where he led the ANM in Iraq as part of a combined leadership. Prominent leaders included Basil al-Kubaisi, Salam Ahmad, Abdel-Ilah al-Nasrawi, and Amir al-Helou.

Under the rule of General Abdul Karim Qasim in Iraq, conflict arose between the communists and the nationalists, and Hawatmeh was jailed for fourteen months. He was released from prison on 8 February 1963, after the first Ba‘th Party coup that overthrew Qasim.

Along with Basil al-Kubaisi, Hawatmeh started the newspaper al-Wihda [Unity] in Baghdad. However, the newspaper was closed down by the Ba‘th regime in Iraq just twenty-seven days after its inaugural issue, and Hawatmeh was re-arrested for publishing articles and statements about the ANM, which he was in charge of.

After another stint in prison, the Iraqi authorities deported Hawatmeh to Egypt. From there, he moved to Lebanon, where he grew in stature as one of the leaders of the “revolutionary democratic new left” within the ANM. He participated in the battles to liberate Yemen from British occupation and in setting the program for the fourth congress of the National Front in South Yemen, held in early March 1968. The front had led the war of liberation from British colonial rule and had taken power immediately after independence in autumn 1967. During that period, Hawatmeh published his book, The Crisis of the Revolution in South Yemen, where he presented his vision of the revolution as part of the struggle unfolding at that time between the left-wing current in the front and the right, which got the upper hand in late March 1968.

At the same time, Hawatmeh was closely connected to the national liberation movement in North Yemen, before and after the September 1962 revolution, and he was part of the process that led to the creation of the Revolutionary Democratic Party of Yemen, which later merged with the National Front in the South, and named itself the Yemeni Socialist Party. As a leader in the ANM, Hawatmeh also contributed to the building up of branches of this movement in the rest of the Arabian Gulf (Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain), as well as in Libya.

After the June 1967 defeat, Hawatmeh took part in commanding the ANM’s Palestine branch. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded in December 1967, and the intellectual and political differences within its ranks came to the fore. Hawatmeh, who was a member of its politburo, led the movement that split from the PFLP, announcing his inclination toward the “intellectual program of the proletariat.” On 22 February 1969, this movement (led by Hawatmeh) severed all ties with the ANM and formed the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It operated under this name until 1975, when it was decided that its name be shortened to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

The founding meeting of the DFLP, also considered its first national general congress, was convened in August 1970, and Hawatmeh was elected General Secretary of its Central Committee. He was re-elected in its subsequent congresses, the most recent of which was the seventh congress, held in stages over the first half of 2018, and he continues to hold this position as of early 2024.

Nayef Hawatmeh played a significant role in formulating the leftist ideology of the DFLP. Having initially adopted the ideas of the Vietnamese revolution, the phenomenon of the cult of Che Guevara that had become widespread in Latin America, and the ideas of some of the “new left” tendencies in Europe, the front shifted toward taking scientific socialism as its guiding methodology for analyzing social reality and using it as a manual for working to change this reality. Consequently, the DFLP moved from being a “united left front” (i.e. a revolutionary democratic organization) to a democratic left-wing party that considered itself part of the Palestinian working class movement, working to strengthen the comradely relationship between its various factions and all its other components.

Under the leadership of Hawatmeh, the DFLP maintained that the Palestinian resistance movement was facing an “inherent crisis” that was manifested in its “impromptu and sentimental” relationship to the Palestinian masses. It held that the transformation of the resistance into a full-fledged people’s war of liberation “required that the masses be organized and armed with a fundamental political consciousness linking them to the resistance.”

After establishing its armed bases on the east bank of the Jordan River, the DFLP called for “the establishment of a popular, democratic, nationalist regime” in Jordan that would form “a revolutionary launching pad” for the liberation of Palestine. Then, after both Egypt and Jordan expressed their support for the Rogers Plan put forward by the then-US Secretary of State William Rogers in July 1970, the DFLP started to call for the Palestinian resistance to decisively intervene to take over power in the country and put an end to the duality of power between the resistance and the monarchy; it took as its basic premise the slogan “all power to the resistance.” The DFLP succeeded  in making this the official policy of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Clashes broke out in Jordan between the Jordanian army and the armed factions of the PLO in September 1970. The Jordanian authorities offered an enormous reward to anyone who could capture Nayef Hawatmeh, dead or alive; for all practical purposes, this was a death warrant. After the armed presence of the PLO factions was routed from Jordan, they concentrated themselves in Lebanon, and Hawatmeh moved to Beirut in July 1971. There he rose to prominence as a particularly charismatic leadership figure known for his sense of initiative. The October 1973 war broke out, and Hawatmeh, as head of the DFLP, played a major role in the debates that led to the formulation of the PLO’s “Interim Program”; he had been calling since July 1971 for “a secure, liberated support base” in the occupied Palestinian territories that would ensure the continuity of the Palestinian revolution.” He was instrumental in formulating the “Ten Point Program” that was adopted by the Palestinian National Council in June 1974. All this was reflected in the subject matter of his two books: What Is to Be Done after the October War to Overcome the Defeatist Mentality and Win the Right to Self-determination, published in 1973, and The Tasks at Hand for the Palestinian Revolution in order to Vanquish the Defeatist-liquidationist Solution and Win the Right to Self-determination, published in 1974.

In late 1975, Hawatmeh pushed the DFLP to articulate its position on the plan of a “national authority” on any part of Palestinian land liberated from the Israeli occupation and called for a struggle to expel the occupation from the territories occupied in 1967 and to guarantee the recognition of “the Palestinian people’s right of return to its homeland and to self-determination within the framework of a fully sovereign Palestinian nation-state under the leadership of the PLO.” Since that date, the DFLP has not deviated from its adherence to this line, which has become part of the PLO’s political program. At the strategic level, it has held onto its aspirations for a fundamental, democratic resolution of the Palestinian national question through the establishment of a single unified, democratic state on the entire land of Palestine, where equality would prevail between all citizens regardless of their ethnic, religious, or national backgrounds, with equality between the sexes.

Since the second half of the 1970s, the DFLP under Hawatmeh’s leadership has become one of the major factions under the umbrella of the Palestinian revolution and the PLO. It had an active political and organizational presence in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian diaspora, including foreign countries that have communities of Palestinians residing, whether to work or study. When it comes to armed struggle, the fighters of the DFLP’s military wing, which bears the name “the Revolutionary Armed Forces,” have carried out high-level missions deep inside occupied Palestine.

In 1982, Hawatmeh and the rest of the PLO’s leaders supervised operations to resist Israel’s military invasion of Lebanon, and they remained steadfast in Beirut, holding out for nearly three months. Then, after the departure of the PLO forces from Lebanon, he moved to Damascus and continued to work as DFLP secretary-general, mainly focusing his efforts on expanding the front’s role in the struggle inside the occupied Palestinian territories.

When a split occurred within the ranks of the Fatah movement and the PLO, Hawatmeh played a significant role in defending the unity of the PLO as a coalition and safeguarding its interim national program in the face of all attempts at sowing political discord. He also helped to draft the programs that were ratified by the PLO’s decision-making bodies, especially the Declaration of Independence of 15 November 1988, and proposed plans for a realistic alternative to the Oslo Accords.

As the head of the DFLP, Hawatmeh opposed Palestinian participation in the Madrid Peace Conference held in late October 1991 based on American conditions. He also firmly rejected the Oslo Accords in September 1993. For years, he called for the leadership of the PLO to abandon what he called “futile negotiations” and for it to free itself from the obligations imposed on it by Oslo Accords; he advocated instead the creation of a unified higher national body with the authority to negotiate on behalf of all powers calling for a comprehensive and balanced political solution. Hawatmeh also demanded that a solution be reached through an international peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations and the five permanent members of the Security Council. This solution would guarantee the realization of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state on the borders of 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with UN Resolution 194, which guaranteed them the right to return to the homes and properties from which they were forcibly evicted. It would also guarantee the removal of all traces of the 1967 war and occupation, a demand that held international legitimacy in accordance with UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.

Under Hawatmeh’s leadership, the DFLP took the position that the schism between Fatah and Hamas in 2007 was the outcome of partisan interests and the struggle for power between the two movements, and that it had fragmented the unity of the Palestinian people. The DFLP held that this had harmed the Palestinian national cause and that its continuation would contribute to cutting off the path toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. It saw rebuilding national unity as a priority for the Palestinian struggle. On this basis, it participated in all the efforts that were made, including all the national dialogues that were held, to put an end to this split and to lift the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.

Hawatmeh called on the leadership of the PLO to apply for membership for the State of Palestine in the UN General Assembly, building upon Resolution 67/19 of 2012, which granted it observer membership, and for Palestine to continue to be given accession to all international bodies and agencies, so as to ensure its place as an active member of the international community. He also called for the Palestinian people to be given protection against Israeli occupation by the international community.

After the PLO’s Central Council convened in early March 2015, where it adopted a resolution to cease “security coordination” with Israel and to stop the pegging of the Palestinian economy to that of Israel, the DFLP, under Hawatmeh’s leadership, insisted on the necessity of enforcing the council’s resolutions.

In recent years, Hawatmeh has greatly stressed the crucial importance of engaging in a social-democratic struggle with the goal of reshaping the Palestinian Authority and its functions, so that it contributes to strengthening the steadfastness of Palestinian society in its battles for independence. This includes laying the foundations for a multiparty parliamentary system of government, where executive power would be subject to accountability by the legislative branch, and opening up space for civil liberties. He has also come to focus on the importance of rebuilding the institutions of the PLO on democratic foundations, stressing the need for the Palestinian National Council to be representative of both those within Palestine and in the diaspora on the basis of full proportional representation. He has called for all decisions of the PLO’s Executive Committee to be taken with the participation of delegates from all Palestinian groups represented in the organization and for broadening the organization’s representative character by including delegates from the Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

DFLP Secretary-General Nayef Hawatmeh is one of the first generation of prominent leaders of the modern Palestinian revolution and in the PLO. Hawatmeh’s personality combines the qualities of a diligent national leader with those of a committed leftist intellectual, one who has enriched the Palestinian and Arab library by authoring dozens of books. His books clearly display his attraction to the enlightened side of Arab-Islamic heritage, as is his invocation of critical thinking in re-examining this heritage, and in following European history from the Renaissance and Enlightenment to the socialist revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. Hawatmeh’s writings analyzed the Palestinian revolution, the national liberation movements across the Third World, and the pan-Arab liberation movement, particularly the role played by the Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in the major social, economic, and educational transformations and the mistakes made by Nasserist rule, especially when it came to the absence of democracy in the political process and within political parties, workers’ unions, and elsewhere.

Selected Writings

"أزمة الثورة في الجنوب اليمني: تحليل ونقد". بيروت: منشورات دار الطليعة، 1968.

[The Crisis of the Revolution in South Yemen]

"حوار بين الجبهة الديمقراطية والطليعة المصرية: لطفي الخولي يحاور حواتمة". "مجلة الطليعة" (تشرين الثاني/ نوفمبر 1969).

[Lutfi al-Khuli interviews Nayef Hawatmeh: A Dialogue between the DFLP and Egypt’s al-Taliʿa]

"العمل بعد حرب تشرين لدحر الحل الاستسلامي وانتزاع حق تقرير المصير". بيروت: الجبهة الديموقراطية لتحرير فلسطين، الإعلام المركزي، 1974.

[What Is to Be Done after the October War to Overcome the Defeatist Mentality and Win the Right to Self-determination]

"المهمات الراهنة للثورة الفلسطينية من أجل دحر الحل الاستسلامي التصفوي وانتزاع حق تقرير المصير". بيروت: الجبهة الديموقراطية لتحرير فلسطين، الإعلام المركزي، 1974.

[The Tasks at Hand for the Palestinian Revolution in order to Vanquish the Defeatist-liquidationist Solution and Win the Right to Self-determination]

"الوضع الراهن ومهام حركة التحرر والتقدم العربية". بيروت: الإعلام المركزي (جـ. د.)، تموز 1979.

[The Present Situation and the Tasks of the Progressive Arab Liberation Movement]

"نحو مجابهة حازمة لاتفاقيات كامب ديفيد – نحو موقف موحد لـ م.ت.ف". بيروت: الإعلام المركزي، 1979.

[A Resolute Challenge to the Camp David Accords: Towards a Unified Position of the PLO]

"مهمات الثورة الفلسطينية بعد غزو لبنان ومعركة بيروت". "شؤون فلسطينية". العدد 135 (شباط 1983)

[The Tasks of the Palestinian Revolution after the Invasion of Lebanon and the Battle of Beirut]

"أزمة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية – تحليل ونقد الجذور والحلول". الإعلام المركزي، 1986.

[The Crisis of the PLO: Analysis and Critique of its Root Causes and Solutions]

"صيانة الوحدة والتحالفات ومهمات النضال لانتصار الانتفاضة". الإعلام المركزي، آذار 1988.

[Maintaining Unity and Alliances: Tasks of the Struggle for the Triumph of the Intifada]

"نايف حواتمة يتحدث: إعداد عماد نداف". بيروت: دار المناهل؛ دمشق: دار الكاتب، 1997.

[Nayef Hawatmeh Speaks with Emad Naddaf]

"أوسلو والسلام الآخر المتوازن". دمشق: دار الأهالي؛ بيروت: بيسان للنشر والتوزيع، 1999 .

[Oslo and the Other, Balanced Peace]

"الانتفاضة – الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي إلى أين؟". حوار عبد العال الباقوري وعبد القادر ياسين. دمشق: الدار الوطنية الجديدة؛ بيروت، دار الفرات، 2001.

[The Intifada - Whither the Arab-Israeli Conflict? A Conversation with Abdel ʿAal al-Baqouri and Abdel Qader Yassin]

"اليسار العربي رؤيا النهوض الكبير". دمشق: دار الأهالي؛ بيروت: بيسان للنشر والتوزيع، 2009.

[The Arab Left: A Vision for Its Great Resurgence]

"رحلة في الذاكرة". دمشق: الدار الوطنية الجديدة؛ بيروت، دار الفرات، 2014.

[A Trip down Memory Lane]

"الثورات العربية لم تكتمل: مسارات واستعصاءات". دمشق: الدار الوطنية الجديدة؛ بيروت: دار الفرات،2015.

[The Arab Revolutions Are not Complete: Their Trajectories and Quandaries]

"نايف حواتمة في حوار شامل مع ’اليوم السابع’". "اليوم السابع" (17 تشرين الثاني/ نوفمبر 2017).

[Nayef Hawatmeh in a Comprehensive interview with al-Yawm al-Sabiʿ]

"قضايا وحوارات فكرية وسياسية". المركز الفلسطيني للتوثيق والمعلومات، 2018.

[Intellectual and Political Issues and Conversations]

Sources

باروت، محمد جمال. "حركة القوميين العرب: النشأة، التطور، المصائر". دمشق: المركز العربي للدراسات الاستراتيجية، 1997.

ثابت، أحمد (إعداد). "نايف حواتمة ومحطات الكفاح الفلسطيني بين الثورة والدولة". القاهرة: المركز العربي للصحافة والنشر، [2007].

الشريف، ماهر. "البحث عن كيان: دراسة في الفكر السياسي الفلسطيني، 1908-1993". نيقوسيا: مركز الأبحاث والدراسات الاشتراكية في العالم العربي، 1995.

عبد الكريم قيس وفهد سليمان. "الجبهة الديموقراطية .. النشأة والمسار". بيروت: شركة دار التقدم العربي-دمشق، الدار الوطنية الجديدة، 2001 .

قويدر، رشيد. "نايف حواتمة وجدلية الانسان.. الوطن والحرية". "الحوار المتمدن". العدد 3558 (26/11/2011).