Cuba, Palestine, and the Internationalist Solidarity against Imperialist Counterinsurgency: OSPAAAL and the Tricontinental sphere (1966–1980s)
Editorial Note: The following excerpt is from a forthcoming article by Alejandro Pedregal and Alberto García Molinero, titled "Cuba, Palestine, and the Internationalist Solidarity against Imperialist Counterinsurgency: OSPAAAL and the Tricontinental sphere (1966–1980s)." The full article will appear in a special issue for the academic journal Middle East Critique.
Revolutionary Solidarity and Arab Alliances: OSPAAAL, the Palestinian Struggle, and the Militant Tricontinental Perspective
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine was a central pillar of the Tricontinental movement throughout its history. Already at the Havana Conference in 1966, delegates from the newly formed Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) raised their voices in the Cuban capital to emphasize the urgent need to build effective networks of solidarity capable of confronting international imperialism, embodied by powers such as the United States and Israel in the Middle East. Acting as representatives of the Palestinian people, prominent PLO figures played a direct role in the approval of a 'Resolution on Palestine' at the conclusion of the Conference, as well as in the subsequent formation of OSPAAAL (OSPAAAL 1966, 90). Among those involved were the poet and co-founder of the General Union of Palestinian Writers, Abd al Karim al-Karmi (better known as Abu Salma) (1909–1980); the Secretary General of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, Husni Saleh Khuffash (1917–1972); and the founder of the Arab Lawyers Union and Secretary of the Palestinian Committee for Asian African Solidarity, Zuhair Bashir Al-Rayyes (1933–1996), (US Congress Subcommittee, 1966).[1]
As a result of this early connection, by the late 1960s, OSPAAAL had not only embraced the Palestinian struggle as a central component of Tricontinental solidarity but had embedded it into the very fabric of its internationalist discourse. Unlike many forms of state-based solidarity that were mediated through diplomacy, moralist, or humanitarian rhetoric, OSPAAAL’s support for Palestine was explicitly militant, grounded in the language of revolutionary fraternity and anti-colonial insurgency. Tricontinental magazine and the Boletín Tricontinental, as media organs of the Organization, became seminal instruments for constructing a transnational field of identification between Palestinian revolutionaries and movements from Angola, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere. While OSPAAAL did not supply material aid itself, its publications openly chronicled and defended the transfer of arms, training, and logistical support to Palestinian organizations by Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia (Petran 1969, 34).
The defense of armed struggle advanced by OSPAAAL was far from abstract. It was rooted in the broader framework of Cuban internationalism, which rested not merely on ideological declarations but on concrete institutional and material commitments to the liberation of the Third World (García Molinero 2025a, 59). Within this infrastructure, OSPAAAL functioned as a strategic actor in its own right—ideological, cultural, discursive, and logistic in nature— rather than simply a cultural extension of Cuban foreign policy. It translated militancy into discourse, legitimized armed resistance, and fostered a sense of tricontinental simultaneity that linked geographically distant movements under a shared revolutionary horizon of sovereignty and liberation. In this regard, as Rahel Losier, Fernando Camacho Padilla and Jessica Stites Mor (2024) have pointed out, by shaping international public opinion, delineating ideological boundaries, and intervening in the symbolic economy of Cold War geopolitics, OSPAAAL played a key role in globalizing the anti-colonial struggle. In doing so, it rendered the Palestinian cause both visible and intelligible within a transnational narrative of decolonization, offering it not only solidarity but symbolic power on the world stage (Chamberlain 2022, 91 94).
From its earliest engagements, OSPAAAL treated the Palestinian resistance not as a remote or secondary struggle, but as a paradigmatic case of anti-imperialist warfare. By the late 1960s, the Havana-based organization had begun to foster notable encounters with Palestinian resistance leaders and revolutionary groups. Through Cuban intermediaries tied to OSPAAAL—such as the journalist Teófilo Acosta and A. Zapata—the networks of Tricontinental solidarity gained early access to the everyday realities within the vanguard spaces of anti-imperialist struggle, including the training camps of Fatah’s ‘Storm Commandos’ (Al-Asifah) (Acosta, 1967). Far from simply portraying the conflict in a superficial manner, OSPAAAL established pioneering ties with key figures such as Abu Ammar (Yasser Arafat), and the founder of the PFLP, Dr. Mandua—pseudonym of George Habash. As a result of these fruitful exchanges, the Tricontinental sphere amplified the voices of a Palestinian resistance that saw itself as walking ‘the same path as Vietnam, Cuba or China’ in confronting an enemy not to be fought through a racial or religious war, but rather opposed for ‘its position as an aggressor-colonial state.’ (Acosta 1967, 74; Zapata 1968, 70–72).
Being one of the first international organizations to conduct interviews with several of those prominent figures, OSPAAAL also sought to promote effective forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people. These initiatives included the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo in 1969 (OSPAAAL 1969a, 57). Within this forum, the Tricontinental organization played an active role in advocating for the rejection of diplomatic solutions and the promotion of armed struggle, framing the latter as the only realistic path for reclaiming a ‘lost homeland’—in line with what Yezid Sayigh (1997) has examined as the radical responses of the Palestinian resistance during the Global Sixties. By the early 1970s, this rhetoric upheld by OSPAAAL increasingly marked a point of divergence between Cuban diplomacy, which recognized the PLO under Arafat as the official representative of the Palestinian people, and a Tricontinental sphere, which remained closely aligned with revolutionary sectors of the Palestinian resistance like the PFLP and DFLP.
This divergence—which reveals the relative autonomy of OSPAAAL from the Cuban state apparatus—was expressed through a series of sustained encounters with leaders such as Abu Mustafa of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF). Interviewed in the Nahr el-Bared camp, Mustafa offered Tricontinental media not only a window into Palestinian political thought, but also an intimate understanding of its specific organizational frameworks and social base (Ortega 1971, 14–20). Rather than depicting Palestinians solely as passive victims of dispossession, these texts foregrounded agency, discipline, and ideological coherence in an effort to represent Palestinians as ‘co-subjects’ within a broader revolutionary discourse (Bernard 2024, 134). In this vein, throughout the 1970s, OSPAAAL continued to probe the mechanisms of Israeli repression through theoretically rich contributions from spaces such as the General Union of Palestinian Students. These analyses examined the cultural tools of domination deployed by the Zionist entity, particularly within the educational sphere, as part of a broader project of ideological and cognitive control (GUPS 1974, 50).
As a result of the sweeping global transformations that unfolded from the mid-1970s onward, OSPAAAL’s position on Palestine gradually shifted toward a more pragmatic orientation, increasingly aligning with the official diplomatic posture of the Cuban state. The formal assumption of the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement by Cuba in 1979 may have influenced this turn within the Tricontinental sphere toward a less “confrontational” and more diplomatic approach to international relations in the Third World (Erisman 2019). If armed struggle was initially upheld as the sole legitimate means of Palestinian emancipation, its role was gradually downplayed, even if it was never fully renounced. This nuanced stance is evident in the Organization’s later publications during the decade, such as Tricontinental no. 64 (1979), which offered extensive coverage of international support for Palestinian self-defense, framing armed resistance as part of a broader necessary response to Israeli and U.S. aggression. This evolution toward a diplomatic strategy—departing from the emblematic militancy and radicalism of the early Cold War era (George 2014)—placed OSPAAAL in a renewed position, wherein some of its early commitments to actors like the PLO began to gain increased prominence.
On the eve of the 1980s, prominent Palestinian figures affiliated with the PLO—such as Nazim Abu Nidal, president of the Palestinian Writers’ Union—visited OSPAAAL’s headquarters in Havana, seeking to reinforce a relationship considered vital to the resistance (Abu Nidal 1979, 3–6). These ongoing exchanges, highly valued by figures like Majed Abu Sharar (head of the PLO’s Press Department) for their media potential in advancing international solidarity with Palestine, were made possible through the efforts of Cuban journalists linked to OSPAAAL, including Virgilio Calvo, Leonel Nodal, and Moisés Saab (Sharar 1979, 41–49).[2] As a result of this sustained and intensive relationship, figures such as Yasser Arafat continued to regard the alliance with OSPAAAL as a central ideological pillar of the broader three-continent struggle. In one of his last interviews given to Tricontinental media, titled No One Lives Twice to See the Glory, Arafat praised the work of the organization through a message explicitly addressed to Havana: ‘We fight together in the same trench, against Zionism, imperialism, colonialism; for a future in which our children will know no injustice, oppression, international monopolies, colonialism or slavery.’ His words underscored that Cuban–Palestinian affinities were not metaphorical but strategic alignments, forged through shared identification of enemies and modes of resistance.
This bond, consolidated between OSPAAAL and the Palestinian resistance by the late 1970s, was not, however, limited to PLO-affiliated cadres. Despite a gradual decline in its of public influence, organizations such as the PFLP and the DFLP continued to maintain close ties with the Tricontinental sphere well into the final stages of the Cold War. Leaders like Nayef F. Hawatmeh nurtured a strong relationship with the solidarity organization—ranging from the submission of exclusive statements for publication in Tricontinental magazine to personal visits to OSPAAAL’s headquarters in Havana (Hawatmeh 1978, 69–81; OSPAAAL 1988, 63). The prestige and enduring influence that this intercontinental solidarity platform held within the Palestinian resistance stemmed not only from OSPAAAL’s direct engagement with the Palestinian cause, but also from its broader conception of revolutionary strategy encompassing the entire Arab region.
From the very origins of the Havana Conference (1966), the Arab revolutionary universe left an indelible mark on this transnational project through figures such as Mehdi Ben Barka, the pro-Palestinian Moroccan nationalist leader, closely connected to the Algerian FLN, and prominent architect of the Tricontinental horizon (Faligot 2013). Delegations from countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Egypt played a notable role in the Havana discussions that led to the creation of new forms of solidarity, with significant implications for the Palestinian cause. The Arab political map that emerged in OSPAAAL’s pages, however, was anything but uniform. Countries like Syria and South Yemen—whose governments aligned themselves with Marxist and anti-imperialist politics—were portrayed as organic allies of Palestine.[3] OSPAAAL’s ties with Yemen, in particular, were deep and sustained, frequently illustrated with images of revolutionary fighters confronting ‘Yankee imperialism and Zionist colonialism’ as intertwined enemies.
Alejandro Pedregal is a Research Council of Finland Fellow in the Department of Film, Television, and Scenography at Aalto University.
Alberto Garcia Molinero is a Researcher in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Granada.
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[1] Despite constituting an open forum for debate marked by a wide heterogeneity of political tendencies—Maoists, pro-Soviets, Trotskyists, and even moderate socialists—the Tricontinental movement sought to prioritize the inclusion of leftist actors who embraced a nationalist, sovereign, and secular approach. This explains the absence of personalities such as the Amin al-Husayni, who, despite having participated in events like Bandung (1955), was not invited to Havana due to his sectarian approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict and past associations with Nazi Germany (Mattar 1988).
[2] During two interviews conducted at the historic headquarters of Prensa Latina (Havana) in November 2023, Moisés Saab and Leonel Nodal revealed that they felt deeply imbued with a personal commitment to the Palestinian cause, which had guided their long careers in the field of investigative journalism. In the case of Moisés Saab, his Syrian-Lebanese roots served as a personal motivation to highlight the struggle for an identity torn away from the Arab peoples of the region due to the ongoing aggressions by the State of Israel. Leonel Nodal emphasized that the Palestinian cause was so important to him that he sought to promote the production of an Arabic edition of Tricontinental magazine from Lebanon. This project came to an end with the Zionist invasion of the country in 1982, which included the bombing of the edition’s headquarters (Young 2018).
[3] The notable presence of OSPAAAL in Syria and Yemen ran parallel to the sensitive (and still little-known) interventions that Cuba carried out in both territories throughout the 1970s (Gleijeses 2011).