IN STEREO

These are the leaders here: Saddam, Abu Ammar and Abu Ali. Abu Ammar, may his soul rest in peace, was the Palestinian president before Abu Abbas. Abu Ali Mustafa was the secretary general and the most powerful of the National Front. He’s one of its founders. If I want to tell you about the powerful leaders, it’s these three. There is George Habash. We call him ‘Al-Hakim’, ‘the wise’. He was Christian, and one of the founders of the National Front. He died a natural death. After his death, Abu Ali Mustafa took over. [He] was abroad, so he came back, during the 2002 Intifada, [with] a slogan: ‘We came back to resist, not to negotiate’. He launched some operations and caused losses among the Israeli army, so they decided to assassinate him. Two missiles entered his office while he was working in Ramallah. The one who took over after him was Ahmad Sa’dat. He’s in prison now. I’ll tell his story. He was on television and he said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth… and three heads for one head.” Like a threat.

There was a National Front cell that snuck inside Israel, and they assassinated a big leader in the Israeli army, Rahba’am Za’ifi. There were five of them. They snuck into the hotel where he was living. Of course, they accomplished the mission, and they were able to return to the [Palestinian] Territories. It was perfectly organised by the secretary general. So, forty days after Abu Ali’s martyrdom, Ahmad Sa’dat had got the number one head. They were afraid of him and there was pressure on the [Palestinian] Authority. They captured him with the other five, and they tried them in our own Palestinian court for Za’ifi’s death, and imprisoned all of them for seven years at the Authority’s prison in Jericho, under American guard. In 2007, the Israeli army attacked the prison to restrain those five heroes who accomplished the operation with Ahmad Sa’dat. Of course, the Authority handed them over. They’re still in Israeli prison. Here, there was a letting down by the Authority, you understand? I mean, you’re resisting occupation and then your compatriots imprison you and abandon you. – Ahmed