Interview with Ibrahim Dakkak (1929–2016)

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This interview and remembrance marks the passing in 2016 of Ibrahim Dakkak, the last of the great socialist leaders of Palestine's post-Nakba generation. Dakkak helped lead three major movements inside the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt): al-Jabha al-wataniyya or Palestine National Front, a coalition launched in August 1973 that mobilized civil resistance to Israeli land confiscations and a whole host of other rights violations; Lajnat al-tawjih al-watani (the National Guidance Committee or NGC), established in 1978 to coordinate resistance efforts inside the oPt with the political leadership of the national movement based outside; and al-Mubadara al-wataniyya (the National Initiative Committee), which Dakkak cofounded with Mustafa Barghouti and Haidar Abdel-Shafi in the 1990s to counter the consequences of the Oslo Accords. In this interview, Dakkak also shares personal reminiscences of growing up in the Old City, as well as the 1967 arson attack on al-Aqsa Mosque, and his role in its restoration after the fire.