One of the Palestinian opposition groups opposing the peace process and the Oslo Accords. The organization, which holds an especially uncompromising position towards Israel, supports the continuation of the “armed struggle” with the aim of creating a “secular-democratic Palestinian state on all of the Palestinian lands” – i.e., in place of Israel. The PFLP, a left-wing Marxist group, was established in December 1967 by George Habash, a Christian born in Lod, who headed the group until the year 2000, and supported a hard-line stance against Israel. In 2000, Habash retired from the organization’s leadership and was replaced by his deputy Abu ‘Ali Mustafa. Today, Ahmad Sa’adat, a resident of Ramallah, heads the organization. He was involved in numerous terrorist actions against Israel and currently is serving a sentence in Israeli prison as a result of his role in the murder of the Israeli minister of tourism, Rehavam Zeevi, by PFLP terrorists on October 17, 2001. In the late 1980s, following the breakup of the USSR and the communist bloc which had supported the organization ideologically and economically, PFLP influence and popularity on the Palestinian street decreased. Despite this, the PFLP is considered the largest left-wing organization on the Palestinian scene, as well as the organization second in importance in the PLO. The members of the organization have tried to compensate for its small size by executing large-scale terrorist activities against Israel. Thus, in the 1970s, the PFLP figured prominently as the organization which initiated and led airplane hijackings, and in 1972 its activists carried out an attack on Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, with the help of Japanese terrorists, in which 22 were killed. During the Second Intifada (beginning in September 2000), PFLP activists carried out a series of attacks involving the explosion of car bombs within Israel, in addition to carrying out shooting and explosives attacks in Judea and Samaria, and the firing of mortars from the Gaza Strip. As noted above, PFLP activists also murdered the government minister Rehavam Zeevi in a hotel in Jerusalem. During the recent past, the organization’s activists have cooperated with members of other factions to carry out terror attacks within Israel.