Why I brace myself when I see Nayif Hawatimah. I saw Nayif Hawatimah (Abu An-Nuf, as he is nicknamed) on Bi-l-`Arabi. I have written about him before: I grew up with his name around the house. He was my uncle's best friend from their days in the Movement of Arab Nationalists back in the 1950s. But as I was becoming political aware, I became more aware of the DFLP and I never liked Hawatimah and never trusted his organization. Lenin once observed that if there are two communist parties in a country, one of them is by necessity an "opportunist" one. (Of course, here Lenin reveals his typical dogmatic authoritarian streak, but let me use it here). The DFLP has served from its very beginning as an arm of the Palestinian right: in fact, the DFLP would not have survived if it was not for `Arafat's policies of financing and arming splinter Palestinian organizations to keep Fath on top--not anymore, I see. The DFLP returned the favor and later would champion the two-state solution after the PNC-s 10-points program in 1974, when `Arafat was still playing coy and dissimulative. The DFLP also pretended to speak for a progressive vision of the Jewish question, but its deeds spoke otherwise as Alan Gresh pointed out in a book of his on the PLO--if I remember correctly. I was 13 when my uncle was tying to convince me that the two-state solution is the way to go, and I remember how unconvinced I was. My uncle remained close to Hawatimah and was--as I was told--the one person along with Sadiq Jalal Al-`Adhm--who would attend DFLP's politburo meetings although they were not members. I also never liked Hawatimah's personality: he is your typical humorloss, one-dimensional Marxist who spoke on Progress Publishers' sentences. But what bothered me most was his obsession with Goerge Habash: it killed him that Habash--who he viewed as his intellectual inferior--was the popular one with charisma and mass appeal. (Hawatimah--as is well-known--had the charisma of a tomato). But say what you want about Hawatimah: he knew how to preserve the financial well-being of his organization: when PLO organizations were receiving millions during the Lebanon sojourn, they all squandered the wealth except the DFLP which invested a certain portion. But the DFLP as an organization is finished. Hawatimah today came out in support of Abu Mazen: which made you smell a rotten deal. I know when a rotten deal is being cooked: that is when Hawatimah emerges. Abu Mazen is trying to win over what is left of the PFLP and the DFLP by promising to revive the PLO in order to appease the two organizations with little if any electoral appeal. Of course, somebody like Hawatimah does not want a role in the Palestinian legislative council because DFLP won two whopping members. He prefer unelected bodies in the PLO which still operates on the assumptions of Palestinian public opinion from the 1970s. (Don't get me wrong: I still want a role for a restructured PLO not only because I am not an electoral ritualist but because I believe that 1) the Palestinian diaspora is not represented in the Oslo-created legislative council, and 2) the presence of unelected quasi-leftist and quasi-progressive groups in the PLO can be a positive influence against the religious-oriented groups.) What can you say about the DFLP when Hawatimah's own second-in-command was none other than Yasir `Abd Rabbuh (a character as rotten as Bassam Abu Sharif, and `Arafat had the two under his control when they were still operating in their respective organizations). Today, Hawatimah--thinking that the Soviet Union still exists--also praised Putin's government. I will say this in favor of the DFLP: like the PFLP it was one of the rare Lebanese or Palestinian armed group that did not engage in gangstry or thuggery during the civil war years.