Arab nationalist planned hijackings - Los Angeles Times - By Kim Murphy, Jan. 27, 2008
...He studied medicine at the American University of Beirut,
founding a series of radical student organizations that called for unifying the Arabs’ military might to annihilate Israel. After Israeli forces crushed an Arab assault and moved into the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War, Habash formed the PFLP to continue operations against Israelis. It became the second-largest faction within the PLO, after Arafat’s Fatah organization.
In one of its first operations, an Israeli El Al airliner was hijacked to Algiers in July 1968, forcing the Israelis to free 16 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of the plane and its passengers.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jan-27-me-habash27-story.html