RAMALLAH // Sakher Habash, the Palestinian revolutionary and intellectual who died on Sunday after a stroke aged 70, devoted the greater part of his life to the Palestinian struggle.
Known by his nom de guerre Abu Nizar, Habash was a founding member of the Fatah Party and although he supported the Oslo process of talks with Israel in the mid-1990s, he never rejected armed resistance. Violence, he argued, was a legitimate way for Palestinians to struggle for their rights.
To the end, like his lifelong compadre Yasser Arafat, Habash donned the revolutionary uniform.
In 2002, after the second intifada had broken out and Israeli forces invaded Ramallah, he even picked up arms one last time, and holed up in a building to repel the invading Israeli tanks.
He also cultivated other interests, was a prolific writer of both poetry and history, writing among other things a history of the Fatah movement, and became known as one of the party's intellectuals.
"He was a multifaceted man," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. "He was an avid reader and writer. Every meeting we had, he would sit down and write a poem and send it to me afterwards."
Habash regularly hosted members of every faction as well as community leaders at his home in Ramallah, and Palestinian unity was very much a priority for him.
"He was a unifier. He was very pleasant and very positive," Ms Ashrawi said. "Even after he had his first stroke, his innate humanity always shone through. He was always looking for productive ways to solve problems."
Perhaps as a result of his close reading of history, Habash had a sense of propriety. He made it his business to make sure that Palestinians who had been killed in fighting with Israel were remembered and pressured local authorities to name streets after them.
He also maintained an unshakeable faith in the Palestinian cause and never wavered in calling on others to do the same.
Foreseeing the potential dangers of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in his last interview with this reporter, in 2004, he warned that the "upcoming phase requires even more steadfastness, patience, unity and preparedness for sacrifice". This, he added, had to be accompanied by "absolute faith in inevitable victory".
Habash was born in 1939 in a village near Jaffa in what is now Israel. In 1948, his family fled the fighting and ended up in refugee camps in the West Bank, first in Ramallah then in Nablus.
In the late 1950s, Habash helped found Fatah, which evolved mainly out of young disaffected Palestinian refugees in Egypt and Gaza, under the leadership of Arafat. But it was in the West Bank that the nationalist movement first made an effect, with its philosophy of low-level guerrilla warfare against Israel conducted outside the control of Arab states.
Fatah's first major guerrilla attack was in 1965, when fighters tried and failed to sabotage an Israel National Water Carrier station, which had recently begun diverting vast amounts of water from the Jordan River. Two years later, Fatah joined the PLO, but the movement only cemented its reputation after the 1967 war, notably at the battle of Karameh, Jordan, in 1968 where Fatah fighters successfully held off the Israeli army with support from the Jordanian army.
That battle convinced most Palestinians of the logic of Fatah's philosophy, and Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the PLO the next year, a position he held until his death.
However, Fatah's guerrilla activity also saw it run afoul of Jordan, where the bulk of the movement resided, both as a result of punitive Israeli strikes on Jordanian targets and the behaviour of the movement's fighters, who had almost created a state within a state. This culminated in September 1970, when the Jordanian army ousted Fatah from the country, forcing the movement to move its headquarters to Lebanon.
There, Habash became Arafat's military adviser and was also responsible for recruitment. The influx of Palestinian fighters in Lebanon, however, destabilised that country, and the killing of 26 Fatah trainees in 1975 by Phalangist forces sparked Lebanon's 15-year-long civil war, which eventually saw the Israeli army invade and force Fatah out once again.
Throughout this period, Habash remained close to Arafat, and he followed him to Tunis. Many years later, in 2004, Habash would describe the fighting in Lebanon as the darkest time in the Palestinian struggle. Compared to that, he said, the current division between Fatah and Hamas was minor.
By then, a member of Fatah's ruling central committee, Habash had endorsed the movement's shift to political negotiations with Israel under the Oslo process.
His wife, three sons and a daughter survive him.
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Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
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Aston martin DBX specs
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 542bhp
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Price: Dh848,000
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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Common OCD symptoms and how they manifest
Checking: the obsession or thoughts focus on some harm coming from things not being as they should, which usually centre around the theme of safety. For example, the obsession is “the building will burn down”, therefore the compulsion is checking that the oven is switched off.
Contamination: the obsession is focused on the presence of germs, dirt or harmful bacteria and how this will impact the person and/or their loved ones. For example, the obsession is “the floor is dirty; me and my family will get sick and die”, the compulsion is repetitive cleaning.
Orderliness: the obsession is a fear of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, or to prevent harm coming to oneself or others. Objectively there appears to be no logical link between the obsession and compulsion. For example,” I won’t feel right if the jars aren’t lined up” or “harm will come to my family if I don’t line up all the jars”, so the compulsion is therefore lining up the jars.
Intrusive thoughts: the intrusive thought is usually highly distressing and repetitive. Common examples may include thoughts of perpetrating violence towards others, harming others, or questions over one’s character or deeds, usually in conflict with the person’s true values. An example would be: “I think I might hurt my family”, which in turn leads to the compulsion of avoiding social gatherings.
Hoarding: the intrusive thought is the overvaluing of objects or possessions, while the compulsion is stashing or hoarding these items and refusing to let them go. For example, “this newspaper may come in useful one day”, therefore, the compulsion is hoarding newspapers instead of discarding them the next day.
Source: Dr Robert Chandler, clinical psychologist at Lighthouse Arabia
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
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Scores
New Zealand 266 for 9 in 50 overs
Pakistan 219 all out in 47.2 overs
New Zealand win by 47 runs
Specs
Engine: 2-litre
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 255hp
Torque: 273Nm
Price: Dh240,000
ULTRA PROCESSED FOODS
- Carbonated drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- Margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars
- Energy drinks, milk drinks, fruit yoghurts and fruit drinks, cocoa drinks, meat and chicken extracts and instant sauces
- Infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes
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In numbers
1,000 tonnes of waste collected daily:
- 800 tonnes converted into alternative fuel
- 150 tonnes to landfill
- 50 tonnes sold as scrap metal
800 tonnes of RDF replaces 500 tonnes of coal
Two conveyor lines treat more than 350,000 tonnes of waste per year
25 staff on site
At a glance - Zayed Sustainability Prize 2020
Launched: 2008
Categories: Health, energy, water, food, global high schools
Prize: Dh2.2 million (Dh360,000 for global high schools category)
Winners’ announcement: Monday, January 13
Impact in numbers
335 million people positively impacted by projects
430,000 jobs created
10 million people given access to clean and affordable drinking water
50 million homes powered by renewable energy
6.5 billion litres of water saved
26 million school children given solar lighting
About Takalam
Date started: early 2020
Founders: Khawla Hammad and Inas Abu Shashieh
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: HealthTech and wellness
Number of staff: 4
Funding to date: Bootstrapped
The biog
Hometown: Cairo
Age: 37
Favourite TV series: The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror
Favourite anime series: Death Note, One Piece and Hellsing
Favourite book: Designing Brand Identity, Fifth Edition
more from Janine di Giovanni
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THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Abu Dhabi GP schedule
Friday: First practice - 1pm; Second practice - 5pm
Saturday: Final practice - 2pm; Qualifying - 5pm
Sunday: Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (55 laps) - 5.10pm
How to help
Call the hotline on 0502955999 or send "thenational" to the following numbers:
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The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Messi at the Copa America
2007 – lost 3-0 to Brazil in the final
2011 – lost to Uruguay on penalties in the quarter-finals
2015 – lost to Chile on penalties in the final
2016 – lost to Chile on penalties in the final
