Legendary Palestinian leader Farouk al-Qaddumi dies aged 94

As students in Cairo in the 1960s, al-Qaddumi and Yasser Arafat founded the Palestinian Fatah movement and worked with Nasser. To his dying day, he refused to go back home under an Israeli permit

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (L) and head of the Fatah central committee Farouk al-Qaddumi at the Fatah central committee in Tunis.

Legendary Palestinian leader Farouk al-Qaddumi dies aged 94

Sami Moubayed

last update on 23 Aug 2024

On 4 February 1969, a delegation of flamboyant young Palestinians walked confidently into the office of Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser in Cairo, introducing themselves as “representatives of the Palestinian Revolution”.

Heading the group was 40-year-old Yasser Arafat who, on that day, would be elected chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

He was followed into the office by Farouk al-Qaddumi (Abu al-Lutuf), who had organised the meeting with Nasser’s trusted confidant Mohammad Hasanein Heikal, then editor-in-chief of the mass circulation Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.

It is not known whether this was the first meeting between Nasser and the Palestinians, given that Arafat and Qaddumi had been Cairo residents at the time of the Egyptian revolution of 1952.

Promoting Arabism

During this period, Arafat was a student at Cairo University, and Qaddumi was studying at the city’s American University. In early Egyptian security reports, a clear distinction was drawn between the two men.

Getty Images — The late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Farouk al-Qaddumi during a meeting in Tunisia in 1992.

Qaddumi was seen as pro-Nasser, but Arafat favoured Mohammad Neguib, Egypt’s first president, who was forced to step down in 1954.

Qaddumi was a declared Arab nationalist and would continue to promote Arabism until his death at the ripe old age of 94 on 22 August 2024. He is the last of the founding fathers of Fatah, along with current Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

The last of the founding fathers of Fatah, al-Qaddumi was a declared Arab nationalist and would continue to promote Arabism until his death

Born into a family of Palestinian landowners in 1930, Farouk al-Qaddumi was raised in the village of Jinsafu near Nablus, studying at mixed schools in his hometown and then in the city of Qalqilya in the West Bank.

As a teen he joined a new paramilitary group called Al-Najjadah, aimed at training and indoctrinating Palestinian youth against the British Mandate. He then moved to Jaffa with his family where he spent the most memorable period of his teens.

Expulsion and relocation

That ended when his family were expelled by the Israelis in 1948. Years later, he would recall his first encounter with Jewish students at Jaffa. "We played…when we won, we would beat them; if we lost, we would beat them as well."

In 1950, Qaddumi moved to Saudi Arabia to work for oil giant Aramco and joined the Ba'ath Party that had been established in Damascus by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar.

He worked briefly in Libya and Kuwait, before settling in Egypt to study economics and political science at the American University of Cairo.

It was during here that he met Arafat, co-founded Fatah in October 1959, and launched the 'Palestinian Revolution' on 1 January 1965.

AFP — Yasser Arafat (C), Nabil Shaath (L), Farouk al-Qaddumi, and others pray on 1 October 2001 at the graves of those killed in an Israeli raid on the PLO in Tunis in 1985.

Qaddumi had plans to complete his studies in the US but after obtaining a student visa, it was revoked due to a book he had left behind at the embassy premises, titled The Struggle between Communism and Capitalism.

It was the early years of the Cold War and Qaddumi said his reading preferences were why the Americans cancelled his visa, thus changing the course of his life and career.

Career in Fatah

Qaddumi began to write inflammatory articles for the Fatah mouthpiece Filastinuna and married Nabila al-Nimer, a fellow student at Cairo University who hailed from Nablus aristocracy.

Later known as Um al-Lutuf, she would play a crucial role both in his career and that of the Palestinian national movement, establishing the women's department and later landing a job at the Arab League during her husband's tenure as PLO representative.

In 1965, Qaddumi was elected on to Fatah's Central Committee. Four years later, became a member of the PLO's Executive Committee, tasked with coordinating efforts first with Nasser, then, upon his death in 1970, with his successor Anwar al-Sadat.

It was in Cairo that he met Arafat, co-founded Fatah in October 1959, and launched the 'Palestinian Revolution' on 1 January 1965

Qaddumi would later claim that Sadat trusted him to such an extent that he revealed, on 4 October 1973, Egypt's plans to go to war against Israel, two days before the October War broke out.

That same year, he was appointed director of the PLO's Political Department, shortly after Israeli commandos staged a major raid in central Beirut, killing three top Palestinian commanders.

Dubbed the 'Foreign Minister of Palestine,' Qaddumi helped draft the final communique of the Arab Summit in Rabat, Morocco, in November 1974, which recognised the PLO as the "sole and legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

On the move again

Qaddumi relocated to the Jordanian capital Amman along with Arafat and was arrested during the Black September showdown with the Jordanian Army in 1970.

AFP — Farouq al-Qaddumi of the PLO (L) listens to the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Nayef Hawatmeh in Damascus on 7 April 2002.

Nasser sent an Egyptian officer to secure his release via Jordan's King Hussein, and Qaddumi moved to Beirut with the PLO's top command, where he remained until the Israeli invasion of 1982.

International mediation led to the withdrawal of Palestinian troops from Lebanon, and Qaddumi lobbied for their resettlement in Syria, rather than in faraway Tunisia.

Such a distant location would deprive the Palestinians of their land access to Israel, he said, insisting that they remain geographically close to their homeland. He was overruled and relocated to Tunis with Arafat in 1983.

He would remain there for the rest of his life, refusing to return to an occupied Palestine after the Oslo Accords were signed in September 1993.

A 'no' to compromise

He was vehemently opposed to the Palestinian-Israeli peace treaty signed by Arafat and Israel's then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, just as he opposed UN Security Council Resolution 242 in the aftermath of the June 1967 War, which called for a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Farouk al-Qaddumi refused to budge on Oslo, but nor did he stand in its way and refused to come out openly against Yasser Arafat.

He was vehemently opposed to the Palestinian-Israeli peace treaty signed by Arafat and Israel's then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin

He never agreed to enter Palestine under an Israeli permit and said the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was nothing but an "illegitimate illusion".

When Arafat died in Paris on 11 November 2004, Qaddumi said he had been murdered. He was suggested as Arafat's replacement as head of the PNA, but he rejected this, given his disapproval of the PNA and the Oslo Accords that gave birth to it.

Seeing out his days

He was nevertheless elected to replace Arafat as chairman of Fatah's Central Committee, a post that he would hold until 2009.

AFP — Fatah co-founder Farouk al-Qaddumi talks to the press in Paris on 5 November 2004. He has died at the age of 94.

He continued to be a prolific writer and frequent guest on Arab political talk shows, famously opposing the rift between Hamas and Fatah that led to the 2007 occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Qaddumi was cordial with all Palestinian military groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas.

Deteriorating health and old age finally got the better of him. His beloved wife Um al-Lutuf passed away on 26 June 2024, two months before his own passing.

It was fitting that, on 22 August 2024, both PIJ and Hamas issued statements hailing him as a "legendary leader of the Palestinian national movement."

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