110-705: The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command ( Arabic : الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين – القيادة العامة ) or PFLP-GC is a Palestinian nationalist militant organisation based in Syria . It is a member the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril after splitting from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) based on ideological and internal disputes. In
220-900: A Greek Catholic Christian, Jibril was a Muslim. Throughout the 1980s the General Command actively cooperated with the nascent Hezbollah paramilitary group (made mostly of Shia Muslims ) dedicated to armed struggle against Israel, as well as with Syria and Iran, both of whom fund and arm Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the mid-1990s, Jibril held conferences with these groups in Tehran and Damascus in order to achieve tighter coordination of activities, though his organization remained small and its own actions were more concerned with aiding Hezbollah and achieving an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Israelis never forgot Jibril's spectacular exploits, especially
330-599: A 13-member political bureau , including notably Majida Al-Masri , Taysir Khalid and Qais Abd al-Karim . The DFLP is primarily active among Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon , with a smaller presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its Jordan branch has been converted into a separate political party, the Jordanian Democratic People's Party (JDPP or Hashd), and the DFLP is no longer active in
440-595: A PFLP-GC guerrilla landed a motorized hang glider (apparently supplied by Libya) near an Israeli army camp near Kiryat Shemona in Northern Israel on 25 November 1987. He succeeded to kill six soldiers and wounded several others, before being shot dead himself. The action has been seen by some as providing the catalyst for the eruption of the First Intifada . On 2 January 1988, nighttime Israeli airstrikes on Ain al-Hilweh killed three members of PFLP-GC. It
550-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
660-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
770-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
880-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
990-703: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] {{main other| ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
1100-527: A mysterious package onto a flight to Tel Aviv. While the girls assumed they were helping their "boyfriends" pass drugs, they were unknowingly carrying explosives. On 21 February 1970, the group used its first barometric triggers to detonate two in-flight airliners nearly simultaneously: a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv that fell in Aargau Canton , killing 41, and an Austrian Airlines flight from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, which actually failed to destroy
1210-626: A negotiated settlement to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . By that time, the Rejectionist Front was composed primarily of leftist groups, among them the PFLP, DFLP, General Command, PLF, and numerous other small factions. However, the members of these PLO groups were limited in their ability to confront Fatah, which never lost its supremacy within the umbrella organization. The only group that waged uninterrupted attrition against Arafat
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#17327823574771320-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1430-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
1540-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
1650-509: A spokesman for the pro-rebel Palestine Refugee Camp Network said, "the implementation of the truce has been problematic" because of "intermittent" government shelling of Yarmouk and clashes on its outskirts. Many PFLP-GC fighters reportedly defected to the rebels. One PFLP-GC commander said "I felt that we became soldiers for the Assad regime, not guards for the camps, so I decided to defect". He claimed that government forces stood by and watched as
1760-643: A state without classes and national oppression, a state which allows Arabs and Jews to develop their national culture." One of the attacks for which the DFLP is best known is the 1974 Ma'alot massacre in which 25 schoolchildren and teachers were killed. Although the National Resistance Brigades have fighters based in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip , these fighters have been engaged in relatively few military operations since
1870-548: A time-span from February to August 2007. The congress was divided into three parallel circles: West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian exiles. The congress elected a Central Committee , with 81 full members and 21 alternate members. Subsequently, after the closure of the 5th national general congress, the Central Committee re-elected Hawatmeh as Secretary-General of the DFLP. The Central Committee also elected
1980-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2090-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2200-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2310-689: Is a member organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization , the Alliance of Palestinian Forces and the Democratic Alliance List . The group was founded in 1969 by Nayef Hawatmeh , splitting from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It maintains a paramilitary wing, the National Resistance Brigades . The DFLP's declared goal is to "create a people's democratic Palestine , where Arabs and Jews would live without discrimination,
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#17327823574772420-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
2530-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
2640-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
2750-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
2860-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
2970-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
3080-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
3190-660: Is still the recognized representative of the Palestinian people, and a reactivation of the PLO's constitutional supremacy over the PNA in connection with power struggles in Palestinian society is a distinct possibility. In February 2023, the DFLP launched a party in Lebanon for the Palestinian refugees still living there, together with the Lebanese Communist Party . The DFLP held its 5th national general congress during
3300-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
3410-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command - Misplaced Pages Continue
3520-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
3630-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
3740-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
3850-666: The 2000 Camp David Summit . By the time of the Oslo Accords , the dissolution of the Soviet Union had resulted in a loss of funding for the DFLP. The DFLP thus lost its influence over the Palestinian independence movement, while Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rose to prominence. In 1999, the DFLP reconciled with Fatah and considered recognising the State of Israel in
3960-702: The Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
4070-629: The Fatah -backed Black September group in the Munich Olympic killings ( 5–6 September 1972), Habash continued to be the first among equals among the Rejectionist Front, the groups that refused any permanent settlement in a framework other than military victory. From 1970 to 1973, the group targeted a number of aircraft; typically having members seduce single young women and promise them a life of adventure and love – often while getting them addicted to drugs – before asking them to carry some cash and
4180-402: The First Intifada , the DFLP became increasingly critical of Fatah for its continued participation in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process . This caused a rise in internal tensions, as one of the DFLP's leaders Yasser Abed Rabbo expressed support for Yasser Arafat 's engagement in the peace process. In 1991, Rabbo was elected as the DFLP's Secretary General and brought the organization into
4290-484: The First Intifada , until the ongoing Israel-Hamas war (2023–present) which has seen the DFLP fight alongside Hamas and other allied Palestinian factions . The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was established by George Habash in 1967, in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War . The PFLP was a Marxist-Leninist , Palestinian nationalist and Pan-Arabist organization; it advocated
4400-814: The Palestinian refugee camps . The DFLP's leader, Nayif Hawatmeh lives in Syria. It provided military training for Marxist–Leninist militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 1980 and the Sandinistas . The DFLP is not listed as a terrorist organization by the United States government or the United Nations . It was dropped from the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 1999, "primarily because of
4510-657: The September 11 attacks in the United States on behalf of the DFLP; but the DFLP itself denied the accusations and formally condemned the attacks. On 25 August 2007, Palestinian militants from the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and DFLP attempted to enter the Israeli border town of Netiv HaAsara from Gaza. The militants used a ladder to scale the Israel-Gaza border and were killed by
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command - Misplaced Pages Continue
4620-604: The Syrian Civil War (2011-present) fighting on the side of the Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic . The group has a paramilitary wing called the Jihad Jibril Brigades . It has been designated a terrorist organization by Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, United States, and European Union. Jibril joined with George Habash in 1967 as more or less an equal partner in the PFLP leadership. When he quickly tired of
4730-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
4840-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
4950-695: The peace process . The PFLP-GC left the PLO in 1974 to join the Rejectionist Front , protesting what they saw as the PLO's move towards an accommodation with Israel in the Arafat-backed Ten Point Program of the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Unlike most of the organizations involved in the Rejectionist Front, the PFLP-GC never resumed its role within the PLO. From the start, the PFLP-GC
5060-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
5170-718: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Popular Democratic Front for
5280-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
5390-716: The 1970s and 1980s it was involved in the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and launched a number of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians; including the Avivim school bus massacre (1970), the bombing of Swissair Flight 330 (1970), the Kiryat Shmona massacre (1974) and the Night of the Gliders (1987). Since the late 1980s PFLP-GC had been largely inactive in military activities, but re-emerged during
5500-524: The 1970s and 1980s, the group carried out a number of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians , and gained notoriety for using spectacular means. After 1969 Habash could no longer claim that he was the head of the true organization, as all three of the group's original triumvirate were now separate. Nevertheless, due to the PFLP's spectacular successes, including the Dawson's Field hijackings (September 1970), Lod Airport Massacre (1971), and coordination with
5610-671: The 2005 PA municipal elections. In the 2006 elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council , the Front formed a joint list called al-Badeel (The Alternative) with Palestine Democratic Union (FIDA), the Palestinian People's Party and independents. The list was led by the historic DFLP leader Qais Abd al-Karim (Abu Leila). It received 2.8% of the popular vote and won two of the council's 132 seats. The DFLP retains important influence within
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#17327823574775720-519: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
5830-847: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] {{main other|. Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
5940-449: The DFLP became part of the moderate faction of the PLO, which advocated for Palestinian participation in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process . Supported by Egypt and Syria , the moderates of the PLO together represented over 80% of the Palestinian fedayeen and occupied a majority on the Palestinian National Council (PNC). The DFLP, Fatah and As-Sa'iqa submitted a proposal to the PNC that classified their goals: their strategic goal
6050-412: The General Command's insurgents were as a result for decades considered the best trained of any of the Palestinian guerrilla groups. What may have helped Jibril was Hawatmeh's own 1969 defection from the PFLP to form the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP, later without the "Popular"), after Habash tried to compensate for some of the problems that had caused Jibril's exit. In
6160-450: The IDF alongside Hamas and other allied Palestinian factions in subsequent battles throughout the Gaza Strip. The DFLP ran a candidate, Taysir Khalid , in the Palestinian Authority presidential election in 2005. He gained 3.35% of the vote. The party had initially participated in discussions with the PFLP and the Palestinian People's Party on running a joint left-wing candidate, but these were unsuccessful. It did not win any seats in
6270-450: The Israel Defense Forces. The DFLP's armed wing, the National Resistance Brigades , confirmed their participation in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel through their military spokesman Abu Khaled. On 7 October, during the attack on Israel, they claimed to have lost three fighters in combat with the IDF, and said on 8 October that they were engaged with Israeli forces in Kfar Aza , Be'eri , and Kissufim . The DFLP has since fought
6380-426: The Lebanon mountains, a hilly terrain that was more attuned to the image of a guerrilla leader than Arafat's mansions in Tunis. With the emergence of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad throughout the 1980s, Jibril proved more able to cope than Habash and his other allies in the Rejectionist Front. This was enabled by a factor that had nothing to do with his abilities or beliefs: While Habash was a Greek Orthodox and Hawatmeh
6490-408: The Liberation of Palestine The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( DFLP ; Arabic : الجبهة الديموقراطية لتحرير فلسطين , romanized : el-Jabha ed-Dīmūqrāṭiyya li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn ) is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and Maoist organization. It is also frequently referred to as the Democratic Front , or al-Jabha al-Dīmūqrāṭiyya ( الجبهة الديموقراطية ). It
6600-419: The Liberation of Palestine (DPFLP) was established in 1969, when ideological and personal conflicts broke out within the PFLP , resulting in it fragmenting into a number of different factions. The DPFLP were joined by other sections of the Palestinian left and became the third-largest faction in the PLO. DPFLP leader Nayef Hawatmeh , a Jordanian Christian , was characterized as a Maoist by his opponents in
6710-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
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#17327823574776820-432: The Night of the Hang Gliders, and used a variety of operations to try and kill him, none successfully, although his son and heir Jihad Ahmed Jibril was assassinated by a car bomb on 20 May 2002, with the identity of the assassins unknown. Due to these activities, the General Command is regarded as the most hard-line of the old insurgent groups, and currently resists the Oslo Accords from its bases in Syria and Lebanon. During
6930-465: The PDFLP, who satirically referred to him as "Nayef Zedong ". As a Marxist-Leninist organization, the DPFLP initially advocated for a proletarian revolution to overthrow the State of Israel and establish a " popular democratic state " along bi-national lines . During the 1970s the DPFLP carried out a number of attacks, both against the Israel Defense Forces and against civilians. These attacks consisted of bombings, grenade attacks and kidnappings,
7040-412: The PFLP in the direction of an ideology as leftist as possible. Jibril decided that Hawatmeh's theorizing was chafing the PFLP and producing an organization of impotent intellectuals, and declared as such when he formed the General Command. Habash, he stated, had become a puppet to the professors of the exile, the elite among the refugees who were well-educated and wealthy, yet preached class revolution to
7150-408: The PFLP-GC fought the rebels, without helping the Palestinians. Ahmed Jibril reportedly fled Damascus for the Mediterranean city of Tartous . Palestinian left-wing groups—including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the biggest Palestinian leftist group—berated Jibril and the PFLP-GC. One PFLP official said "Everyone knows the true size of PFLP-GC. They are not representative of
7260-450: The PFLP-GC was receiving Syrian arms across the border. The group has come under fierce criticism within Lebanon, accused of acting on Syria's behalf to stir up unrest. At the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the PFLP-GC was an ally of the Ba'ath Party -led government of Syria. The PFLP-GC was based in Yarmouk Camp – a district of Damascus that is home to the biggest community of Palestinian refugees in Syria. Several members of
7370-407: The PFLP-GC's central committee opposed this alliance with the Assad government and resigned in protest. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of
7480-417: The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was traditionally the third-largest group within the PLO, after Fatah and the PFLP, and since no new elections have been held to the PNC or the Executive Committee since 1988, the DFLP still commands important sectors within the organization. The PLO's role has admittedly diminished in later years, in favor of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), but it
7590-410: The Palestinians". Another said that Jibril "does not even belong to the Palestinian Left. He is closer to the extremist right-wing groups than to revolutionary leftist ones". On 18 December, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) denounced Jibril, saying it would expel him over his role in the conflict. Despite being based in Syria, the PFLP-GC have participated in fighting inside the Gaza Strip during
7700-474: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
7810-413: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
7920-553: The State of Israel . During the 1977 meeting of the PNC, the DFLP expressed support for the establishment of an independent State of Palestine on territory controlled by the PLO. By the outbreak of the Southern Lebanon conflict in the mid-1980s, the DFLP stopped carrying out terrorist attacks against civilian targets and instead started conducting border raids against Israeli military positions in Southern Lebanon . During
8030-516: The aircraft, which made an emergency landing . The PFLP-GC was also responsible for the Avivim school bus massacre in 1970 and the Kiryat Shmona massacre in 1974. Jibril focused on carving out a stake of the PLO recruitment in Lebanese refugee camps. While Fatah absorbed enormous casualties in the 1982 Lebanon War, the General Command succeeded in surviving, and at the end retained most of its previous manpower. In one of its most famous attacks,
8140-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
8250-525: The crowd, killing 14 Palestinians and wounding 43. On 3 August 2012, 21 civilians were killed when the Syrian Army shelled Yarmouk. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Syrian Army for shelling the camp and chided the PFLP-GC for dragging Palestinians into the conflict. On 5 December 2012, fighting erupted in Yarmouk between the Syrian Army and PFLP-GC on one side, and Syrian rebels on
8360-658: The destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a secular socialist state in Palestine. By 1968, the PFLP had joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), becoming the organization's second-largest member. The PFLP quickly developed a reputation as a violent terrorist group, launching a series of international terrorist attacks in order to draw attention to the situation in Palestine. The Democratic Popular Front for
8470-597: The early 1990s, but it reportedly cooperated with the Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon. Supporters of the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have suggested the PFLP-GC was in fact responsible. Following the rise of Hamas in the 1987–1991 First Intifada among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jibril found an able ally in resisting the trend started by Fatah leader Yasser Arafat toward
8580-460: The elite among the exile population, who were detached from the reality of the refugee camps, be they in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. Many leaders of Palestinian groups lived in luxurious accommodations throughout the Eastern Bloc, Europe, or various Arab states, especially Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Jibril uniquely insisted on living in a specially designed security bunker in
8690-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
8800-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
8910-793: The event of a peace treaty, which convinced the United States Department of State to drop the DFLP from its list of designated terrorist groups . After a period of relative inactivity during the 1990s, the DFLP renewed armed attacks against the IDF during the Second Intifada . They carried out a number of shooting attacks against Israeli targets, such as the 25 August 2001 attack on a military base in Gaza that killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others. On 11 September 2001, an anonymous caller claimed responsibility for
9020-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
9130-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
9240-476: The group's lack of field initiative, he was therefore still able to leave while retaining a significant retainer of his previous supporters. One of his most hated enemies within the group, Naif Hawatmeh , unintentionally provided him with the pretext: While Jibril wrestled with Habash over why the Popular Front was so dependent on theoretical discussion rather than armed struggle, Hawatmeh tried to influence
9350-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
9460-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
9570-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
9680-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
9790-682: The latter often carried out in order to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Israel. The group's largest attack was the Ma'alot massacre of 1974, an attack on an Israeli school in which 27 people were killed. Following the Yom Kippur War , the DPFLP changed its name to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and started moderating its position towards support for a two-state solution . Along with Fatah and As-Sa'iqa ,
9900-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
10010-419: The masses in the camps. In July 2021, Talal Naji succeeded Jibril as the secretary-general of the PFLP-GC. The PFLP-GC was founded in 1968 as a Syrian-backed splinter group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was headed by Secretary-General Ahmed Jibril , also known by the kunya "Abu Jihad" (not to be confused with Khalil al-Wazir , the head of Fatah's armed wing who used
10120-795: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] {{main other| (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
10230-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
10340-545: The ongoing Israel-Hamas war , on the side of Hamas and allied Palestinian factions . Its role in Lebanon after the Syrian Army Left Lebanon in 2005 (see Cedar Revolution ) is uncertain, and it has been involved in a number of clashes with Lebanese security forces. In late October 2005, the Lebanese Army surrounded camps of the PFLP-GC in a tense standoff, after Lebanese authorities claimed that
10450-495: The other. The rebels included the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a group made up of Palestinians, called Liwa al-Asifa or Storm Brigade. By 17 December, the rebels had won control of Yarmouk. Afterwards, Government and rebel representatives agreed that all armed groups should withdraw from Yarmouk and leave it as a neutral zone. The agreement also said that the PFLP-GC should be dismantled and its weapons surrendered. However,
10560-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
10670-551: The peace process, causing a split within the organization. Hawatmeh's faction refused to participate in the negotiations, joining with the PFLP in order to form an anti-Arafat front organization in the Syrian capital of Damascus , where they challenged Arafat for leadership of the PLO. Rabbo ultimately left the DFLP in 1993, establishing the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA) and going on to participate in
10780-407: The political arena there. The DFLP mainly attracts Palestinians with a more socially liberal and secular lifestyle, as well as Palestinian Christians , primarily in cities like Nablus and Bethlehem . The party publishes a weekly newspaper in several Arab countries, al-Hurriya (Liberty). The DFLP is believed to receive limited financial and military aid from Syria, where it is active in
10890-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
11000-583: The same nom de guerre ), a former military officer in the Syrian Army who had been one of the PFLP's early leaders. The PFLP-GC declared that its primary focus would be military, not political, complaining that the PFLP had been devoting too much time and resources to Marxist philosophizing. Although the group was initially a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), it always opposed Yasser Arafat and opposes any political settlement with Israel ; for this reason, it has never participated in
11110-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
11220-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
11330-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
11440-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
11550-588: The war, the PFLP-FC supported the Syrian Army to fight the Syrian rebels in and around Yarmouk. At the beginning of the war, tensions arose in Yarmouk between the PFLP-GC and anti-government Palestinian residents. On 5 June 2011, a number of Yarmouk residents were shot dead while protesting at the Israeli border . Allegedly angered by the PFLP-GC's refusal to take part in the protests, thousands of mourners burnt down its headquarters in Yarmouk. PFLP-GC members fired on
11660-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
11770-489: Was more concentrated on means than ends. They never depended on a political platform; most of their recruits were young, exiled, poor, illiterate, and angry. The General Command promised a gun in every hand, and the means to write their own narrative rather than read and praise those of others as the better off exiles did in universities in Europe. Jibril still used iron discipline to keep his fighters loyal and professional, and
11880-429: Was reported that the air raid was in response to the hang glider attack. PSP positions along the coast North of Sidon were also hit and three of their members killed. In total around twenty people were killed in the attack, including seven children and one woman. In the previous two years there had been about forty Israeli air strikes on Lebanon. The PFLP-GC has not been involved in major attacks on Israeli targets since
11990-556: Was the Fatah Revolutionary Council led by maverick hardliner Sabri al-Banna (better known as Abu Nidal ), who was viewed by other Palestinian organizations as not so much a guerrilla as a pure criminal with no higher goal than deposing the moderates at the head of the PLO. Though many Palestinians still were opposed to compromising on the principle of defeating Israel by armed struggle, the existing groups could not channel their desires, as many of them were led by
12100-441: Was the eventual independence of Palestine from "Zionist imperialism"; while their immediate goal was to force the State of Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank , in order to secure self-determination for the Palestinian people in those territories. The PNC adopted a similar resolution, calling for the establishment of a Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, while also refusing to recognise
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