Georges Abdallah’s commitment to the cause for Palestinian liberation not only cost him over 40 years inside a prison cell, as a Lebanese Christian, but he also immediately centered Gaza upon his release.
Upon his release to Lebanon, after serving over 40 years imprisonment in France, the revolutionary Georges Abdallah used his spotlight to praise the regional resistance to Israel and call upon the Arabs to mobilize in order to save Gaza. In particular, he stressed that the Egyptian public is the key.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is a Lebanese revolutionary from the Maronite Christian denomination. He fought against Israel on the battlefield and led cells against the Zionist occupiers, having coordinated his efforts with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Born in 1951 in the northern Lebanese town of al-Qoubaiyat, Abdallah studied to become a secondary school teacher before joining the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). He fought against Israeli invading forces in 1978 and was wounded as a result.
By 1979, he began forming the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, with the help and training of the PFLP. His resistance organization was formed of Lebanese Christian Maronites. His group later began carrying out a series of armed operations, including in France, where he was arrested in 1984 for the possession of illegal weapons and other charges.
In his first comments upon his arrival in Lebanon, Lebanese Arab Resistance leader Georges Abdallah articulates a revolutionary discourse despite 41 years in French prisons. pic.twitter.com/AlXUNBjdRD
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In 1987, Abdallah was sentenced to life imprisonment after being accused of complicity in the 1982 assassinations of Israeli diplomat Yaakov Bar-Simantov and US assistant military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Charles R. Ray. The assassinations had come in retaliation for US-Israeli war crimes committed during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, during which Israel murdered around 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of whom were children.
By 1999, Abdallah had already served the minimum portion of his life sentence in French detention, yet his requests for parole were all denied until 2003, when a judge granted it. However, the US State Department immediately intervened and pressured the authorities in Paris to deny him parole.
Then, in 2013, he was again granted parole through an appeal on the condition that he would agree to be deported from France and never return. Yet, even this was too much for the US State Department, whose spokeswoman at the time, Victoria Nuland, declared Washington’s opposition to it. Ultimately, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls would bow to US pressure and refuse to sign Abdallah’s deportation papers.
However, finally, on Friday, the revolutionary Lebanese political prisoner would be granted his deportation agreement and returned to Beirut, after serving over 40 years in prison.
‘The Resistance is Strong’ – Georges Abdallah Freed after 41 Years in Prison
Yet, he didn’t focus on his own case upon returning to Beirut and immediately delivered an address to the media focusing on the starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“Still, there are millions of Arabs simply watching. In Egypt, a few meters away from Egypt’s al-Azhar, meters away from the Kaaba of Mohammad bin Abdullah (Prophet Mohammad), the children of Palestine are dying of hunger. Such a shame for all the Arab peoples, which will go down in history, more than for the regimes.”
Abdallah also made it clear that due to the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon being resilient and honest, it remains strong, noting how fighters in Gaza are reduced to skin and bones, yet continue to fight against the Israeli invading army.
Not only did he send his message to the entire Arab World, specifically talking to the general public that had ignored the suffering in Gaza and refused to act, he carried a very specific message for the people of Egypt:
“If 2 million Egyptians take to the streets, the mass killing would stop. The Genocidal war would come to an end. It all depends upon the Egyptian people more than anyone else!”
Georges Abdallah’s commitment to the cause for Palestinian liberation not only cost him over 40 years inside a prison cell, as a Lebanese Christian, but he also immediately centered Gaza upon his release and shamed the vast majority of the Arab World, which carries on life as usual.
Despite their alleged commitment to the principles of the culture and religions they adhere to, the Arab World abandoned Gaza, and Abdallah makes it abundantly clear that the time to act is now, noting that nobody has died trying to break the siege of Rafah. Not even a small group of Egypt’s 118 million-strong population has attempted to open the border by force.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
