Yahya Hammuda (, also transliterated Hamoudeh or Hammouda ; 1908 – 16 June 2006)
Biography
Hammuda was born in the village of
Lifta in 1908.
General Refugee Congress
Following the
Nakba, Hammuda took part in an attempt to secure a role for an independent Palestinian refugee delegation to the Rhodes armistice talks together with Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari and '
Aziz Shehadah.
He was a founding member of the General Refugee Congress (GRC). The first GRC gathering occurred on 17 March 1949 in Ramallah, where Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari was elected as President and Hammuda as deputy.
[Avi Plascov (1981), "The Palestinian refugees in Jordan 1948-1957" Routledge p 20] They persevered with an attempt at securing formal recognition for the body, but they were marginalized by Jordan, where the GRC was based.
The Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC) hoping to gain a degree of independent Palestinian representation, invited GRC delegates to come and appear before them.
[Ilan Pappé (1992) “The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1951” I B Tauris ] Ultimately the body was politically "ill-fated."
Role in the PLO and post-1967 politics
Hammuda was elected as acting chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization in late 1967. He had previously been a member of the PLO's Executive Committee.
[Ṣāyigh, Yazīd. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, 172, 176, 186.]
On January 21, 1968, Hammuda was received in Jordan by King Hussein and prime minister Bahjat Talhouni in a public welcome to reinvigorate the PLO within Jordan.
He was succeeded as chairman by Yasser Arafat.
Views
In the aftermath of the
Six-Day War, while acting as PLO chairman, Hammuda publicly stated his belief that Jewish citizens of Israel could not be expelled to the countries from which they had emigrated. This "moderation" came under criticism from Palestinian factions who were troubled by Hammuda's apparent "willingness to come to terms with the existence of Israel." The statement was ultimately retracted.
Historian Yezid Sayigh suggests that Hammuda was a "sympathizer" to the leftist Palestinian faction called the Popular Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (POLP, est. 1964 by Samir al-Khatib and 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Wajih). POLP had "a modest following" and "Maoist leanings" and sought "to bring all guerilla forces under PLA command within a single body."
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