Abu Ali Mustafa is a Palestinian activist, born in Jenin Governorate in 1938. He is famous for his affiliation with the Arab Nationalist Movement and his alignment with the historical nationalist line of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and he took positions opposing the leftist group.
He led the first patrols to liberate Palestine across the Jordan River, rebuilt the organization and deployed military cells, and coordinated activities between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He was arrested twice, and Israel attempted to assassinate him several times, and succeeded in doing so in 2001.
Abu Ali was known for his asceticism and his simple life. He had a united, unified personality. The leaders of the Palestinian struggle gathered around him, regardless of their ideological stripes. He defended his option of returning to Palestine after the Oslo Accords, in the face of a torrent of sharp criticism to which he was subjected from some of his comrades and colleagues in the resistance factions that refused. The peaceful option of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
He considered that the central arena of confrontation with the occupation was the occupied interior, and he had to be present in it. He was the author of the famous saying, “We returned to resist, not to compromise.” He added this with continuous work to build his organization and prepare it on the ground for any upcoming confrontation with the occupation, which led to his assassination at the hands of the occupation forces. During the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Birth and upbringing
Mustafa Ali Al-Zebri, known as “Abu Ali Mustafa,” was born in the town of Arraba in Jenin Governorate on May 14, 1938, exactly 10 years before the declaration of the establishment of the occupying state on the land of Palestine.
His father had been a farmer in the town since 1948, after working on the railway and the port of Haifa, and he was one of the participants in the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936.
Abu Ali is married with five children. He is the older brother of Tayseer Al-Zubri, one of the leaders of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the first Secretary-General of the Democratic People’s Party in Jordan (Hashd) since its founding in 1993.
Study and scientific training
Abu Ali studied the first stage in his hometown of Arraba, then in 1950 he moved with his family to Amman, began his working life and completed his studies there.
He also underwent the military course to graduate guerrilla officers at the Egyptian “Anshas” School in 1965.
Political and practical experience
Before devoting himself to struggle work, Abu Ali worked as a correspondent at the Construction and Development Bank, and worked in a carpentry, a glass shop, a cardboard factory, and in other simple and numerous jobs. His affiliation with the poor and the working class contributed deeply to the formation of his thought, personality, and behavior, and this gave him an innate sense of the issues of the working people. And their worries.
At the age of 17, Abu Ali joined the Arab Nationalists Movement, which was founded by George Habash, nicknamed “Al-Hakim” and former Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in 1955.
He was arrested two years later, when Jordan declared martial law and dissolved political parties. He was tried before a military court, and spent 5 years in “Al-Jafr” prison in the Jordanian desert.
In 1963, Abu Ali met his companion in the struggle, Umm Hani, and that was immediately after his release. He married her on July 23, 1964, and insisted on this date out of love for leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.
After marriage, he moved with his family to the city of Jenin, lived in the eastern neighborhood, and opened a commercial store for agricultural materials, then turned it into a popular restaurant for beans, hummus, and falafel.
Abu Ali remained aligned with the historical nationalist line of the Popular Front, and took positions opposing the leftist group led by Nayef Hawatmeh, Abd al-Karim Hamad, Yasser Abd Rabbo, and Qais al-Samarrai, who defected from the Front in 1969 and took the name “Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
Throughout his struggle and political career, he remained alongside Habash and the first leadership of the Nationalist Movement, Wadih Haddad, Hani al-Hindi, Habash, Ahmed al-Khatib, Hamid al-Jubouri, and Saleh Shibl, and alongside new leaders such as Ahmed al-Yamani, Ghassan Kanafani, and Tayseer Qabaa. Abu Ali did not care much about Marxism-Leninism, which the Popular Front adhered to at its third conference in 1972.
After completing his training course in Anshas in 1965, Abu Ali returned to Jenin to lead the work in the “Arab Nationalist Movement” in the northern region of the West Bank, until he was re-arrested in 1966, after the events of the Battle of Al-Samu’ south of the city of Hebron, and he remained in prison for several months, before he was released. He was released the following year, after the defeat of June 1967.
Abu Ali led the first patrols towards the Palestinian homeland across the Jordan River, and worked to smuggle weapons into the country, rebuild the organization, deploy military cells, and coordinate activities between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He was persecuted by the occupation and disappeared for several months in the West Bank at the beginning of the founding of the Front. He assumed internal responsibility for the leadership of the Popular Front, then became the military official in charge of its forces in Jordan until 1971.
He was the military commander of the Front during the resistance battles in its first years against the occupation. Abu Ali also participated in the Battle of Karama in 1968 and the confrontations of Jerash and Ajloun against the Jordanian army in “Black September” 1970. Then he secretly left Jordan for Lebanon in 1971.
While he was in Lebanon, Abu Ali participated in resisting the Israeli invasion in 1982, and went out with members of the Palestinian resistance to Syria. He headed the delegation of the Popular Front in its dialogue with the National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in Aden and Algeria in 1984 and in Bulgaria in 1987, and became a member of the Central Council. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO between 1987 and 1991.
Jobs and responsibilities
After his release from prison in 1966, Abu Ali assumed leadership of the northern region of the West Bank, and participated in establishing the “First Guerilla Unit” within the “Arab Nationalists Movement,” which was concerned with work inside Palestine.
In 1967, Abu Ali participated with Habash in establishing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and held many positions in it. He became Deputy Secretary-General over the past three decades, then Secretary-General in 2000, after the resignation of Habash, who had been his companion for 45 years.
One year later, Abu Ali became a member of the Palestinian National Council, after the transformations that occurred in the Liberation Organization, and the rise of the guerrilla organizations to the leadership of the organization after the resignation of Ahmed Al-Shugairi. He was also elected a member of the Central Committee of the Front in 1969, and a member of the daily leadership in 1970.
At the Third National Conference in 1972, Abu Ali was elected Deputy Secretary-General, until 2000. At the Sixth National Conference in 2000, he was elected Secretary-General of the Popular Front, and he remained in this position until his martyrdom in 2001.
Assassination
The attempt in which he was assassinated was not the first of its kind. Abu Ali was subjected to several attempts, the most prominent of which was in the Al-Kula area in Beirut, where he lived in an apartment in a 12-story building, and a car packed with explosives was parked under the building, but the vigilance of his security apparatus made him discover Her command.
Before that, while he was in the Jordan Valley area in Jordan, his car was subjected to heavy artillery shelling, and the most optimistic people did not think at the time that the person in the car would have survived, but Abu Ali was able to throw himself out of the car and hide in the nearby banana plantations until the danger passed.
After the Oslo Accords were concluded between the PLO and Israel in Norway in 1993, Abu Ali decided to return to the West Bank, despite the rejection and strong opposition of a number of his comrades. He was allowed to return in 1996, and he obtained a national identification number as a Palestinian citizen from the town of Arraba.
There, at the “Bridge of Return,” he announced his famous saying, “We have returned to resist, not to compromise.” Indeed, Abu Ali did not calm down and did not calm down. Israel accused him of responsibility for a number of bombing operations in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and near Lod Airport during the years 2000 and 2001. On August 27, 2001, Israeli warplanes assassinated him by bombing his office in Ramallah.
He was succeeded in the position of the Front’s General Secretariat by Ahmed Saadat “Abu Ghassan,” who did not hesitate to avenge him by assassinating Israeli Minister Rehavam Ze’evi on October 17, 2001.