Born in Lydda in British-ruled Palestine, Habash and has family were driven from their homeland in 1948 by troops of Israel’s underground army commanded by Yitzak Rabin.

Habash returned to his medical studies at the American University of Beirut and graduated in 1951. In 1952, he, Wadia Haddad, another Palestinian, Hani al-Hindi, a Syrian and Ahmad al-Khatib, a Kuwaiti, founded the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), the first and only secular pan-Arab nationalist party to attract adherents in the Arab world.

The goal of the movement was to reunite the Arab world which had been divided into states by Britain and France following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The creation of the ANM coincided with the overthrow of the pro-British monarchy in Egypt by the Free Officers Movement, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who adopted the ANM as a vehicle to achieve Arab unity. Arab nationalists made the return of Palestine the core of the Arab cause, arguing that Palestine could be liberated only by common Arab action. They also strove for more just and equitable societies in the Arab countries and brought about short-lived unions between Egypt and Syria, Yemen and Jordan.

The defeat of Egypt, Jordan and Syria by Israel and the occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 war dealt a hard blow to the Arab cause and to Nasser’s grand vision of a united Arab world. In December that year, Habash and Haddad established the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical, leftist group and Habash was chosen as its secretary general, a post he retained until 2000.
The PFLP made its name in August 1969 by hijacking a civilian airliner with the aim of publicising the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and in refugee camps in Arab countries.

In 1970 the PFLP seized four planes and flew them to a disused airfield in Jordan where passengers were eventually released before the aircraft was blown up.

Although the PFLP joined the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) which was dominated by Yasser Arafat’s Fateh movement from 1968, Habash managed to retain a large degree of independence from the PLO as well as the Arab regimes. He opposed the 1993 Oslo Accord reached with Israel by Arafat and joined Hamas and other dissident groups to criticise a “peace process” in which the Palestinians have been at great disadvantage.
Although a strong secular Christian, Habash explained that he had aligned the PFLP with the Muslim resistance group Hamas because it refused to capitulate to Israeli and Western demand to renounce the armed struggle.

Habash stated, “Every Palestinian has the right to fight for his home, his land, his family, his dignity — these are his rights.” After Palestinian resistance groups were expelled from Beirut in 1982, Habash made his home either in Damascus or Amman where he established a research centre.