Abu Jihad

source : Al-Wazir, Khalil Ibrahim, “Palestinian Biography”, [1]

Al-Wazir, Khalil Ibrahim (ABU JIHAD)

He was born in Ramla, Palestine. He was displaced in 1948 when Israeli forces evicted Palestinians from that region. He settled in the Burayj refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where he completed his secondary education. He planned and executed military acts against Israeli targets and in 1954 was punished by the Egyptian authorities for such activities. Having received his military traning in Cairo while attending classes at the University of Alexandria in 1956, he left college without completing a course. He found work in Kuwait in 1959 and remained there, working as a teacher, until 1963. His stay in Kuwait put him in touch with his comrades with whom he founded the FATEH movement. Al-Wazir was one of the early full-time (mutafarrigh) members of Fatah after the Fatah Central Committee instructed him to open an office for the movement in Algeria. He was also one of the founding editors of Filastinuna, the official organ of Fatah. He was in charge of the recruitment and training of Fatah fighters, creating the nucleus of the fighting force of Fatah, later known as AL-ASIFA, The Storm. Al-Wazir settled in Algeria in 1963 and cultivated ties with military leaders in socialist countries. He opened the first office for Fatah in an Arab country and started the first military training camp for his movement. He visited China in 1964 and later preached "a people's liberation war," although he never supported communism as an ideology. He also visited North Vietnam and North Korea, where he received advanced military education.

In 1965, Abu Jihad settled in Damascus, taking advantage of the Syrian Ba'thist regime's support of the doctrine of people's liberation war. He became the major link between underground activist cells inside the occuppied territories and the Palestinian national movement. The 1967 defeat propelled him into a key leadership position with the PLO, made possible by his reputation as an expert on people's liberation war, considered the only solution at the time. He assumed major responsibilities in the Central Committee of Fatah, in the command of the forces of al-Asifa, on the PALESTINE NATIONAL COUNCIL, and on the Supreme Military Council of the PLO. He was also put in charge of commando operations in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel. Abu Jihad played an important military role in Jordan in 1970-71 during the Black September clashes. He also supplied the encircled Palestinian forces in Jarash and Ajlun. Then, like other PLO leaders, he relocated to Beirut, where he kept a low profile until civil war broke out in Lebanon. He advocated a policy of full support for the Lebanese national movement and helped build up the forces of the PLO's Lebanese allies. His main interest remained with the Occupied Territories. Abu Jihad used his contacts with communist countries to augment the military power of the PLO. The resulting arms acquisition helped bring about a change of the PLO's fighting forces into a conventional army, rather than the "people's liberation forces" on which he had earlier insisted. Nevertheless, Abu Jihad remained close to his fighters; avoiding the lure of Beirut, he established his headquarters in Kayfun, near Alayh in Mount Lebanon.

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel forced Abu Jihad, along with other PLO leaders, to relocate farther away from Palestine, this time in Tunisia. The invasion of Lebanon seemed to have changed Abu Jihad's political and military philosophy; apparently, he lost faith in the PLO's ability to deliver a solution to the Palestinians from outside the Occupied Territories and began to advocate a more populist approach. In 1982, he began to sponsor youth committees in the Occupied Territories. These committees would become the organization that later helped to ignite the first INTIFADA. However, Abu Jihad did not live long enough to see that uprising as he was assassinated by Mossad in April 1988.

At the time of his assassination Abu Jihad was working late in his office. After a brief exchange of fire, Abu Jihad, the mastermind behind the Savoy Operation in 1975 and Dalal Mughrabi's attack on a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv road in March of 1978, was killed. It was reported later that his body was riddled with 77 bullets.