I will keep this as brief as possible. Following my article on the Archbishop of Canterbury meeting with two women with a history of PFLP affiliation, several people contacted me with a variation of the same response: “So what?”

It is hard to believe that, after October 7, there are still people with so little understanding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), what it stands for, and the central role it plays within the Palestinian “resistance” camp.

Some naively imagine that October 7 was a Hamas operation with a supporting role played by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Others assume that because the PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist organisation, it must somehow stand apart from the Islamist groups.

That fundamentally misunderstands the Palestinian armed factions and the reality of the alliances that developed first through violent opposition to the Oslo peace process and later under Palestinian rule after 2006. Whatever their ideological differences, when it comes to fighting Israel and killing Jews, the PFLP and Hamas are brothers in arms.

Nor has the PFLP ever been shy about its position. It openly announced its mobilisation on October 7 and participated in the atrocities that followed. This is the official statement (translated) published on the PFLP website at 10:25am on October 7, 2023.

Officially, the PFLP celebrated the October 7 attack, called for participation in “Al-Aqsa Flood”, urged attacks on the “terrified Zionist invaders”, and encouraged Palestinians to join the fight. PFLP members live-streamed their activities during the assault, while the organisation issued a second statement less than two hours later celebrating the operation.

According to the 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report:

On the official Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades Telegram, PFLP posted several photos showing terrorists in action, with accompanying text that said: “Cells of the martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades stormed several [military] points in the Gaza envelope and have inflicted verified losses in the Zionist ranks.”

The report also notes the close relationship between the PFLP, its Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades military wing, and Iran.

Nor was the PFLP merely cheering from the sidelines. As one of the factions that crossed into Israel on October 7, it participated in both hostage-taking and hostage-holding. Israeli officials believe that, at one stage, the Bibas children may have been held by PFLP terrorists.

This October 7 post from a PFLP Telegram channel boasts of its fighters “storming” into Israel and continuing operations to inflict further losses on both soldiers and “herds of settlers.”

None of this should come as a surprise. The PFLP is often viewed through the lens of Leila Khaled and the era of aircraft hijackings, a period that has been so heavily romanticised that many have lost sight of what the organisation actually is.

The PFLP was never an official stakeholder in the Oslo peace process. The PFLP did not merely criticise Oslo. It rejected the accords outright, resigned from the PLO in protest, and spent much of the 1990s working alongside other rejectionist factions to undermine the peace process. A Guardian article from July 1999 noted that six years into the peace process, the leader of the PFLP was still regarded as one of its “strongest opponents”:

Although the group moved closer to the PLO again in late 1999, this came during the final stages of a negotiation Arafat never intended to complete, and the PFLP leader George Habash did not even bother attending the reconciliation meeting.

The outbreak of the Second Intifada was less than a year away. Throughout this Oslo period, the PFLP deepened its ties with Hamas and Iran, and it was during this period that the PFLP evolved into something very different from the movement many in the West still imagine it to be. Despite their ideological differences, they all found common cause in armed struggle against Israel.

During the Second Intifada, the PFLP played an active part in the violence, even taking responsibility for suicide attacks in Ariel, Netanya, Kfar Saba and in the Jordan Valley. Strategically, following the UN’s Durban conference in 2001, the PFLP also became the key bridge with western left wing movements, through a network of NGOs that would bring them both funds and influence. They had access and reach which the Islamist groups could never match.

This NGO trail is important. Israel has acted against a number of PFLP-linked NGOs – part of a terrorist funding-and-influence network which is poorly understood in the UK.

One example of this network is Samidoun. The NGO describes itself as an “international network of organizers and activists” advocating for the release of Palestinian prisoners, but multiple governments have identified it as a PFLP-linked support network that helps to legitimise and support a terrorist organisation.

In October 2024, the U.S. and Canada both targeted Samidoun. Samidoun was also banned in Germany in 2024.

While the PFLP’s strategy on the international stage focused on spreading its influence through NGO activity, the acts of terrorism against civilians in Israel did not stop either.

In November 2014 the PFLP published a notice calling for attacks against Israel to be escalated. One week later two PFLP terrorists entered a synagogue in Jerusalem armed with a gun and meat cleavers and butchered four Rabbis. They also murdered a policeman before eventually being shot by Israeli security. One of the four Rabbis, Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, was a dual British citizen.

In 2019 Israeli forces raided a large PFLP network in the Ramallah area, which was believed to be responsible for a string of deadly attacks. This included the August 23 bombing which killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.

Samer Mina Salim Arbid, a PFLP official, was the leader of the cell that carried out the attack which killed Rina Shnerb. Here is an image of Zeina Barbar, one of the two women the Archbishop met, holding up an official PFLP poster in support of the terrorist who murdered Rina.

The other woman the Archbishop met also publicly showed support for the PFLP. This is a post from Layan Nasir, in which she aligns with both the PFLP student bloc (the Pole) and the PFLP itself.

Both of the women have distinguished family members, giving their clan influential weight on the Palestinian street. Given the visible support for the PFLP, and their documented activities for the group on campus, it makes it entirely plausible that Israel possessed intelligence relating to the activities that led to their arrests. There is certainly enough evidence to consider that possibility. A pertinent question arises here: even if we were to accept the Archbishop should be meeting PFLP activists – which we should not – on what grounds can the Archbishop call them innocent – let alone suggest they were oppressed by Israel?

As an anti-peace and anti-normalisation group that has always permitted violence as a means of achieving its maximalist demands, the PFLP has never supported the two-state solution as a final end to the conflict. This is the face of the PFLP in 2021, as its spokesperson Abu Jamal declares solidarity with the group’s blood brothers in Iran:

Whether we accept the PA / Fatah at their word or not, on paper they have at least indicated support for a negotiated two-state settlement. Like Hamas, the PFLP has only toyed with accepting the 1967 lines as a transitional stage, but they have never given up their Marxist one-state position.

The official position of the PFLP remains a single state across all of “historic Palestine” and the non-negotiable destruction of the State of Israel.

In this they staunchly and violently oppose the UK’s own political position, which makes it even more absurd for the most senior cleric in the Church of England to meet them and thereby give the impression she supports their methods and their goals.

For context they are ideologically in the same camp as the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) that marches through the streets of the UK with their “victory to the Intifada” banners, although as far as I am aware, the Archbishop has yet to meet with any RCG activists. Unlike the RCG, they are also armed, actively engaged in armed violence and have recently murdered Israelis.

Israel is not alone in designating the PFLP as a terrorist organisation. The group is designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union and Canada. In other words, the Archbishop chose to engage with activists aligned with an organisation officially designated as terrorist by many of the UK’s closest allies.

How anyone can justify that – or pretend it is not a serious failure of judgment by someone in her position – is unfathomable.

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