Before the age of 16, Nayef Hawatmeh joined the Arab Nationalists Movement (ANM) which arose as the immediate reaction to Arab defeat and Palestinian catastrophe.

Before turning 19, he had already assumed full organizational responsibility in the leadership of the ANM in Jordan and the West Bank, following the April 1957 coup in Amman against the national government of Suleiman Al-Nabulsi.

In February 1959, it was necessary for him to go underground after the ANM became persecuted in Jordan. He therefore disappeared from the public view for quite some time. During that period, the first death sentence against Hawatmeh was ordered in Jordan, while several of his brothers were jailed and served long prison terms.

Due to later events—heading an armed march from the Syrian city of Homs—Hawatmeh secretly entered and passed through Damascus onto Tripoli, in North Lebanon. There he contributed to the 1958 revolution as the leader of a large group of cadre and militants of the movement. They were opposed to the then Lebanese President Camille Chamoun’s intention to bring American troops into the region and to the plan designed by the US President Dwight Eisenhower for Lebanon.

At that stage, Hawatmeh formed a combat front alongside Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami and his party, the Arab Liberation Movement, and with the Baath parties of North Lebanon.

Subsequently—following the revolution of July 14, 1958, the stepping down of Chamoun, and reconciliation between conflicting groups in Lebanon—Hawatmeh relocated to Baghdad, where he assumed all ANM responsibilities in Iraq.

Taking part of the struggle against the Iraqi dictatorship of Abdel-Karim Qassem, Hawatmeh was subjected to his first term in prison, for 14 months. He was imprisoned with several figures who would later play outstanding roles in the political life of Iraq, people such as Abdel-Salam Aref, Ahmad Hassan Al-Baker, Saleh Mahdí Ammash, Ali Saleh Al-Saadi, Abdel-Karim Farhan, Soubhi Abdel-Hamid, Abdel-Aziz Al-Akili, Abdel-Hadi Al-Rawi, Tahar Yehya and many other of the most outstanding future Iraqi military and political leaders.

He left the dictatorship’s dungeons, along with those previously mentioned, on February 8, 1963 – after the first Baath party-led coup, in alliance with Abdel-Salam Arif.

It was published that the Al-Wahdah (Unity) newspaper of that time survived only 27 days and was closed down by the Baath régime.

Hawatmeh’s second imprisonment occurred during the Baath Party’s alliance with Arif, motivated by what Al-Wahdah had published and for the positions of ANM under Hawatmeh’s leadership. He was later deported to Egypt and eventually to Lebanon.

Shortly after his deportation of Iraq another death sentence was ordered against him (See the books: “The Harvest of a Revolution: The Iraq Experience 1958-1964,” by General Abdel-Karim Farhan, member of the Command Committee of the Revolution Officials and the Minister of Culture and Promotion; “My Experience in the Baath Party,” by Hani Al-Fekaiki, member of the Iraqi Baath leadership; and “The Arab Nationalist Movement: Emergence, Development, Destination,” by the Arab Center of Strategic Studies).

Within the modern Middle-East nationalist movement, Hawatmeh was considered one of the emerging leaders on the left, heading its democratic-revolutionary wing.

In Yemen he contributed to the fight for that country’s liberation from British occupation and participated in drafting the program for the Fourth Conference in South Yemen held soon after independence was achieved. Related to this, he published the book “The Crisis of the South Yemen Revolution,” in which he outlined a new revolutionary program in response to the struggle between left and right forces of the Nationalist Front then in power which had led the struggle against British colonialism. The book became required reading for the patriotic left of Yemen after it assumed power following the defeat of the right wing of the Nationalist Front and the army.

After the 1967 defeat—when the Palestinian revolution appeared as an answer to Israeli occupation and as a new alternative following the defeat of the Arab regimens—Hawatmeh went on to work in the conditions of heated struggle by nationalist movements throughout Palestine and Jordan.

In a August 1968 conference, that embraced the leftist-democratic and traditional right-wing currents in a coalition of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the Palestinian-Jordanian section of Arab nationalists), Hawatmeh presented the Political and Organizational Report and the Report of Tasks and Action. Through those he was able to expand the role and power of the leftwing in the Arab Nationalist Movement.

With the Popular Front abandoning the decisions of that conference and appealing to various forms of force and violence, Hawatmeh declared the independence of the left current under the name of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) on February 22, 1969.

Following that moment, and under his leadership, the DFLP became a principal and fundamental detachment inside the coalition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and a force behind the revolution and the Palestinian people. Hawatmeh carried out a fundamental contribution in the development of programs and the selection of the tasks of the revolution and of the PLO. Likewise, he played key roles in Palestinian national struggle, battles in defense of the revolution, within the PLO, and among the people, as much in the occupied lands, such as Jordan and in Lebanon during different stages, and—at the same time—in the Intifada and popular action against occupation and colonization.

In September 1970, the Jordanian government launched a total war against the Palestinian resistance and issued a special official statement for the capture “dead or alive” of Hawatmeh, offering a towering sum as a reward. That was the second death sentence ordered against him by Jordan.