Abu Jihad
Khalil El-Wazir (October 10, 1935-April 16, 1988), better known by his nom de guerre "Abu Jihad", was a founder of the Palestinian group Fatah, and later a top aide to Yassir Arafat. Al-Wazir played an important military role in the 1970-71 Black September clashes in Jordan, was the mastermind behind the Savoy Operation in 1975, and Dalal Mughrabi's attack on a bus on in the March of 1978. He was assassinated in 1988, allegedly by Israeli agents of Mossad in Tunis.
Born in Ramla, Al-Wazir became a refugee in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He settled in the Al-Burayj refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where he completed his secondary education. In 1954 Egyptian authorities began to suspect that he was planning and executing military acts against Israelis. Al-Wazir received his military traning in Cairo while attending classes at the University of Alexandria in 1956 but he never graduated. In 1959 he found work as a teacher in Kuwait and remained there until 1963. His stay in Kuwait put him in touch with comrades with whom he later founded the Fatah movement. Al-Wazir was one of the early full-time (mutafarrigh) members of Fatah after opening an office for the movement in Algeria. Over the next few years he visited and increased ties with many socialist countries, including North Vietnam and North Korea, where it is believed he received an advanced military education.
In 1965, Al-Wazir settled in Damascus, where allegedly he became a major link between activist cells inside Israel. Defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War propelled him into major leadership positions within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah. He then relocated to Beirut, and kept a low profile until the Lebanese Civil War broke out, where he voiced his support and helped increase the forces of PLO's Lebanese allies. It is believed that Al-Wazir's contacts with socialist countries helped him to augment the military power of the PLO. The resulting arms acquisition helped bring about a change of the PLO's fighting forces into the form of a conventional army.
The 1982 Lebanon War forced Al-Wazir, along with other PLO leaders, to relocate farther away from Palestine, this time in Tunisia. The war seemed to change Al-Wazir's political and military philosophy, as later he began to advocate a more populist approach. Later that year, he began to sponsor military youth committees which contributed to the First Intifada.
Al-Wazir was assassinated at close range in his home along with his bodyguards at 2 a.m. on April 16, 1988. His wife and children were not harmed. Because of this, he is widely believed to have been assassinated by an Israeli Commando team reportedly led by Moshe Ya'alon.
Abu Jihad is greatly admired throughout the Arab and Islamic world, where his name has become synonymous with struggles against oppression and freedom fighting. He had three sons: Jihad, Bassem and Nidal, and two daughters: Iman and Hanan. Abu Jihad was married to his cousin, Intissar Al-Wazir, who was the first woman to join the Fatah movement, and the first female minister in the Palestinian Authority.