The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was formed as a resistance movement by the late George Habash after the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967.
Combining Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology, the PFLP saw the destruction of Israel as integral to its struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East...
It boycotted Palestinian elections in 1996, but three years later the PFLP accepted the formation of the Palestine Authority and sought to join Yasser Arafat's administration.
The group's deputy secretary general and former military wing commander, Abu Ali Mustafa, was allowed by the Israel authorities to return to the West Bank from Syria.
Considered a moderate within the group, Mustafa succeeded the ailing Habash in 2000. However, he was killed the following year when an Israeli military helicopter fired rockets at the PFLP's office in Ramallah - a sign, said some analysts, of how Israel saw the PFLP as a continuing force...
Although the PFLP has in the past called for the "liberation" of all of historic Palestine, the group's national congress declared in 2000 that it accepted the "new realities" created by the Oslo accords could not be ignored.
It instead sought the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers to the 1967 borders, the dismantling of Jewish settlements on occupied territory, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
However, in 2010 Saadat warned against peace talks with Israel and said the Middle East conflict could only be resolved through the creation of a state shared by Palestinians and Jews.
He said negotiations were "nothing but a cover for the continuation of an Israeli policy built on the continuation of occupation".
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