Mohsen Ibrahim

Mohsin Ibrahim ( Muḥsin ‘Ibrāhīm), kunya Abu Khaled (; 1935 – June 3, 2020), was a Lebanese politician. He was a prominent personality of the Lebanese and Arab left. Ibrahim worked as a school teacher in southern Lebanon. He joined the Arab Nationalist Movement in the 1950s, being a fierce supporter of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He took part in the first conference of the Arab Nationalist Movement in Amman on December 25, 1956, and was elected to the leadership of the organization.

Split in the Arab Nationalist Movement During 1962–1965 a factional conflict surged within the Arab Nationalist Movement. Ibrahim was part of a tendency a within the Arab Nationalist Movement, including Nayef Hawatmeh, Mohammed Kishli, Bilal al-Hasan and Abdel Fattah Ismail, that became increasing inspired by the Cuban, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions and began to gear towards Marxism. In 1968 Ibrahim founded the Organization of Lebanese Socialists, which in 1970 merged with the group Socialist Lebanon to form the Communist Action Organization in Lebanon (OACL).

Civil War and Resistance With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, Ibrahim emerged as a key leader of the Lebanese National Movement (a coalition of leftist and nationalist movements, aligned with the Palestinian forces) along with Kamal Jumblatt and George Hawi. In 1977 Ibrahim was named Executive Secretary of the Lebanese National Movement, after the killing of the incumbent secretary Kamal Jumblatt.

Later years After the 1989 Taif Agreement, Ibrahim largely withdrew from Lebanese political life, largely due to his opposition to the role of the Syrian government (then in conflict with Yasser Arafat, to whom Ibrahim remained closely aligned) in Lebanon. He maintained close relations with the Palestinian leadership, especially with Yasser Arafat. Following the killing of George Hawi, at the fortieth-day observation of Hawi's death, Ibrahim broke his silence in Lebanese politics and issued a strong self-criticism on the role of the Lebanese left during the civil war (having allowed the Palestinian movement to set its agenda and for having attempted to confront the sectarian system in Lebanon without understanding its underlying causes). His funeral took place in Ansar on June 5, 2020. Attendees at the funeral included Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, former parliamentarian and PSP leader Ghazi Aridi, Lebanese Communist Party general secretary Hanna Gharib and the parliamentarians Osama Saad, Yassine Jaber and Ali Osseiran, the representative of PLO and Fatah in Lebanon Fathi Abu Al-Ardat and the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabour. Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora described Ibrahim as one of the foremost leaders of the armed resistance against the Israeli occupation.