On Friday, 25 July, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was finally liberated from French prisons after nearly 41 years behind bars, returning in the afternoon to his homeland, Lebanon, where he was welcomed by large celebrations in the streets as well as a community event in the town of his birth, Qobeiyat. He returned with his commitment to the resistance, to Palestine, and to Lebanon, unquenched despite decades of imprisonment, speaking with a clear voice and vision to demand immediate action for Gaza and rallying around the resistance.
In a clear and powerful rebuke to the United States and France — his captors — immediately after entering the airport, he emphasized the centrality of the resistance, at the same time that these imperialist powers are attempting to force the disarmament of the Lebanese resistance, especially Hezbollah, saying:
“Of course, my return to this land was inevitable because I am certain that the resistance is entrenched in it and thus cannot be uprooted. With resistance, the road home is never lost, for me or for my imprisoned fellow comrades. Their resilience inside depends on our steadfastness outside…The resistance is not weak, it is very strong thanks to its martyrs. Its leaders are martyrs so the Resistance is strong. A weak resistance is when its leaders are traitors. Our resistance is not traitorous, its leadership are martyrs! This is thanks to the sacrifices and blood spilled through resistance. My message today is to support the resistance more than ever, more than ever. We bow our heads in honor of the Resistance’s martyrs, the very foundation of all liberation struggles…A fighter inside captivity…remains steadfast as long as his comrades are taking a leading position in the confrontation. Confrontation against the enemy yields victory and so will its continuation until the end of time, until its defeat. This is ‘Israel’s’ last chapter, there are no more chapters left.”
In his first statement after returning to his homeland, Lebanese revolutionary Georges Abdallah condemned the #Arab inaction over the ongoing Israeli genocide in #Gaza.
Abdallah reiterated that his return to #Lebanon wouldn’t have been possible without resistance.
The Lebanese… pic.twitter.com/njybxt88iq
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 25, 2025
He urged immediate action for Gaza amid the imposed starvation and genocide created by the Zionist regime and its imperialist backers, emphasizing the complicity of Arab regimes, especially in Egypt, closing the Rafah crossing to the entry of food and aid in compliance with Zionist-imperialist orders:
“The resistance in Palestine must continue and intensify. It must be up to the level of the current situation where we see children as moving skeletons. You look at them and you see skeletons moving. Still, there are millions of Arabs simply watching. In Egypt, a few meters away from Egypt’s Al-Azhar; and a few meters away from the Kaaba of Mohammed bin Abdullah, the children of Palestine are dying of hunger, meters away from 80 million followers of Mohammed bin Abdullah in Egypt. Such a shame for all the Arab peoples, which will go down in history, even more than the regimes, whose nature is known. How many people were killed in attempts to enter Gaza? None, no one was killed. If 2 million Egyptians take to the streets, the mass killing would stop. The genocide would come to an end. It depends on the Egyptian people more than anyone else.”
At the same time, hundreds waiting immediately outside the airport doors cheered at the news that his flight had landed, at the same time as many more hundreds gathered along the old Airport Road, particularly in al-Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut. He soon emerged to greet the demonstrators, emphasizing that it was not merely a legal process, but struggle and solidarity in France and resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and throughout the region that won his liberation: “The condition of freedom is rallying around the resistance! The condition of freedom is rallying around Gaza! The condition of freedom is rallying around the martyrs of the resistance!”
After a warm and raucous welcome in the airport, his vehicle proceeded to the Airport Road, where large crowds awaited him, including a number of the mothers of the martyrs, particularly from the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood in Lebanon. The reception of Georges Abdallah highlighted that he is a national resistance leader, as he was welcomed with Lebanese and Palestinian flags, Hezbollah flags, flags of the SSNP, LCP and other left organizations, and others, collectively saluting his sacrifice and commitment to struggle, even as he emphasized the importance of the martyrs and their sacrifices.
Emerging once again, he said, “Glory to Dahiyeh! Glory to the martyrs, the heroes of Lebanon! Glory to the resistance! Glory to you all, glory to our martyred leader [pointing to a poster of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah], glory to the children of the resistance! Resistance is freedom. Rally around the resistance, rally around Gaza, rally around the masses of the resistance! Thank you to the resistance, thank you to the martyrs of Dahiyeh. Thank you to all who carry the banner of freedom!”
He then travelled north to his home village of Qobeiyat, stopping in Al-Bireh, another village in the Akkar region, along the road, where he was greeted with another welcome. All last evening in Qobeiyat and throughout the day today, he has received visitors, conducted interviews and continued to make clear his vision for the continuing resistance and his focus on the liberation of Palestine at a critical moment for Palestinians confronting genocide in Gaza.
As Georges was welcomed home, the Zionist regime continued its campaign of assassinations and aggression against Lebanon, as it killed the martyr Ali Quwsan Sadiq with a drone strike targeting him the southern Lebanese village of Barachit. These ongoing assassinations and attacks continue on a daily basis at the same time that the imperialist powers demand the disarmament of the Resistance. It also comes as reports surface that an unclear number of Lebanese prisoners, particularly fighters in Hezbollah, are being imprisoned in torturous conditions in an underground Zionist prison alongside Palestinian resistance fighters, and at least one of these Lebanese resistance strugglers was martyred inside the prisons under torture with his body remaining imprisoned, alongside the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs.
Supporters of Palestine, the resistance and Georges Abdallah also rallied internationally to commemorate his liberation and to demand urgent action for Gaza to end the genocide and confront the famine imposed upon Palestinians. In Brussels, the daily demonstration at the Bourse focused on Georges Abdallah, at the same moment that the right-wing government in Belgium is seeking to pass new laws in order to criminalize organizations like Samidoun, as well as environmental organizations like Code Rouge.
In Barcelona, people first expressed their solidarity with Georges Abdallah at a gathering confronting the eviction of the La Squatxeria social center, and then took to the streets for a spontaneous gathering in Raval to mark his release.
In Amsterdam, activists spoke and displayed photos of the prisoners in Zionist jails while marking the liberation of Georges Abdallah.
In Paris, people gathered for an emergency demonstration to demand an end to the artificially imposed famine in Gaza, and shouted, “Georges Abdallah won, Palestine will win!”
Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab revolutionary, had been imprisoned in France since 1984; the founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (FARL), he was accused of involvement in the FARL’s assassination of a Mossad agent and a CIA agent in Paris at the U.S. Embassy. Committed throughout his life to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and Lebanon and for a socialist and revolutionary future, he was a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The FARL was born out of the Lebanese national resistance following the Zionist invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, with the conscious orientation that the battle for liberation should not be confined to the borders of the nations targeted by imperialism and Zionism, especially as the Zionist regime pursued assassination campaigns targeting Palestinian leaders across Europe, from Mahmoud Hamshari and Wael Zuaiter to Basil al-Kubeisi and Fathi Shiqaqi.
He was convicted in a trial marked by extreme irregularities; notably, his lawyer at the time worked for the French intelligence services, the DST. While he was expected to receive a sentence of no more than 10 years, the United States intervened to demand a longer sentence, and he was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for release since 1999. French and U.S. imperialism collaborated to impose endless imprisonment on Georges Abdallah; while he pursued legal appeals repeatedly, his parole requests were denied time and again, often with the overt collusion of French, U.S. and Zionist officials. In 2013, he won an appeal for his liberation, only to be denied at the last minute when Manuel Valls refused to sign the order for his deportation; U.S. Secretaries of State, from Condoleeza Rice to Hillary Clinton, boasted of their involvement in enforcing his continued imprisonment.
Throughout this time, it was clear that if he disavowed the resistance, apologized for his role in the struggle, and accepted silence about Palestine, Lebanon and global popular struggles against imperialism and Zionism, he would be freed. He refused to do so, and the movement for his liberation grew exponentially over the past decade, as thousands marched outside the prison where he was held in Lannemezan, France. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement recognized him as part of their ranks, and he would join their hunger strikes from French prison. He never hesitated to send messages with clear politics and revolutionary zeal to every campaign for justice in France and internationally. The Collectif Palestine Vaincra in France was targeted for dissolution specifically for its effective role in demanding Georges’ liberation. Even members of Parliament and MEPs joined the call for his freedom amid the mass demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza and for the liberation of Palestine in the era of Al-Aqsa Flood. His imprisonment became an international symbol for French complicity in Zionist-imperialist genocide, as well as illustrating the harsh repression against the Palestine liberation and solidarity movements in France.
Finally, on 18 July, after nearly 41 years inside French prisons, the courts affirmed that he would return to Lebanon on 25 July, released from behind bars. This was not merely a legal victory: it was the continuing Toufan al-Ahrar, the flood of the free. Indeed, Georges Abdallah was always free: free in his mind, his spirit and his commitment to resistance and liberation. Today, as he walks free in his homeland, his path of struggle urges us all to escalate, to struggle, on the path of Gaza, Dahiyeh and Yemen, and to embrace his calls for action, for resistance, for absolute rejection of the dictates of Zionism, imperialism and their reactionary agents, on the road to victory.
As he has ended his statements for so many years: It is together comrades, and only together, that we shall win.
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