TEL AVIV — The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the so-called military wing of the Marxist-oriented Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is threating to attack American targets in Israel and the Palestinian territories – the first time it has publicly done so in decades.

“All the American targets across all of historic Palestine from Rafah (on the Egyptian border) to Rosh HaNikra (on the border with Lebanon) are legitimate targets and they are within our range,” said an organization spokesperson upon the conclusion of a military exercise in the south of the Gaza Strip. The PFLP is the second-largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The Brigades “rejects Trump’s terroristic decision,” said Abu Jamal, the terror spokesperson for the so-called military wing.

Historically, “The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been part of the axis of resistance and we will continue to be so until we remove the last Zionist soldier from occupied historic Palestine,” said Jamal.

He added that his organization “will be involved in the armed struggle against reactionary, imperialist (the Arab regimes) and Zionist violence. It will be an upgrade of the popular struggle.”

According to the spokesperson, “All options are on the table and there are no red lines after Trump’s crime against Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the holy places of our people. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades won’t hesitate to defend the people of Jerusalem.”

Jamal also sent a message to the Arab regimes, which he called reactionary, saying, “You’ve participated for over a century in conspiracies against Palestine and against the Palestinian people. You haven’t succeeded in quelling the flames of the resistance and you won’t ever succeed.”

He warned these regimes “that the Palestinian people who cling to their homeland and their sons located throughout the world have many tools with which to break the hand that will even think about giving Palestine as a free gift to the Zionists. The resistance has means that don’t even occur to the reactionary Arab regimes.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has socialist and Marxist tendencies and was financially supported by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its founder was George Habash, a Christian doctor who was known for his opposition to political processes considered by Arafat and Fatah over the years.

The organization claimed responsibility for a string of plane highjackings in the 1970s. Habash died in 2008. His replacement, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated in an August 2001 missile strike from an Israeli helicopter due to a number of attacks committed by the organization during the Second Intifada. He was considered the second-most-important individual killed by the IDF during the Second Intifada after Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the founder of Hamas.

In response to the death of their leader Abu Ali Mustafa, a squad of the organization’s military wing, which has since been known as the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, murdered Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi, the most senior Israeli official to be killed in the Second Intifada.