Chapter 01 / 1944–1948
The child from Haifa
Leila Khaled was born in Haifa on 9 April 1944. Her family left the city during the fighting in April 1948 and settled in Tyre, Lebanon. She was four. Exile became the setting of her education and political formation. [1]
The Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession associated with the 1948 war and Israel’s establishment. The United Nations describes more than 750,000 Palestinians as uprooted. The refugee question outlasted the war, shaping families’ lives across borders and generations. [2]
For a child, displacement could first be understood through a house, a school or a missing neighbour. In a 2023 interview, Khaled recalled wanting to return to her family’s home and described her first school in exile as a tent. These are her recollections, recorded decades later, rather than a contemporaneous record of her childhood. [6]
Places, not a reconstruction of the family’s exact route. Explore historical Palestine maps ↗
Chapter 02 / 1959–1967
The making of a revolutionary
Khaled joined the Arab Nationalist Movement in 1959 and the PFLP after its founding in December 1967. She also worked as an English teacher in Kuwait. [1]
The June 1967 war brought the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza under Israeli occupation. For Palestinian movements, defeat sharpened arguments over independent organization, armed action and reliance on Arab governments. Khaled later described the war as a turning point in her decision to participate in armed struggle. [6][13]
Founded under George Habash, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine developed a secular Marxist-Leninist outlook. Its politics linked Palestinian national liberation with socialism and anti-imperialism. It was one faction within a wider, internally divided Palestinian national movement; it did not represent every Palestinian political position. [9][13]
Chapter 03 / 29 August 1969
The flight over Haifa
Khaled and Salim Issawi seized TWA Flight 840 and forced it to Damascus. In her later account, she asked the pilot to fly over Haifa. She described the operation as an attempt to secure attention for the Palestinian cause and the release of prisoners. That explanation records the hijacker’s rationale, not the consent or experience of the passengers. [6]
A US diplomatic telegram written two days after the hijacking records that passengers and crew left the aircraft before an explosion damaged its cockpit and forward cabin. It also reports injuries during the hurried evacuation. The event therefore cannot accurately be described as harmless simply because it caused no passenger deaths. [3]
Publicity was one outcome. Coercion was another. Ordinary travellers had been forced into a political confrontation, exposed to danger and, in some cases, deprived of liberty long after the aircraft landed. Understanding the political objective does not remove those consequences. [3][4]
Chapter 04 / The second hijacking
September 1970
On 6 September 1970, Khaled and Patrick Argüello attempted to seize El Al Flight 219. The attempt failed. Argüello was killed during the confrontation, Khaled was subdued, and the aircraft landed in London. British authorities detained her; she was subsequently released in an exchange connected to the wider hostage crisis. [5]
The attempt belonged to a wave of coordinated hijackings. Other aircraft were taken to Jordan, and hostages became bargaining instruments. The crisis unfolded amid a struggle between the Jordanian monarchy and Palestinian armed organizations that escalated into the fighting remembered as Black September. The hijackings were part of that crisis, not a sufficient explanation for all of its causes. [5]
PBS’s documentary brings together accounts from passengers, crew and captors. [5]
International aviation law was also changing. The Hague Convention of December 1970 addressed unlawful seizure of aircraft, and the Montreal Convention followed in 1971. These were responses to a wider pattern of attacks on civil aviation, rather than to Khaled alone. [11]
Chapter 05 / Women and political organizing
Beyond the icon
Khaled’s subsequent work included the General Union of Palestinian Women, support for displaced and wounded people in Lebanon, and membership of the Palestine National Council from 1979. She became first secretary of the Palestine Women Organization in 1986 and later held leadership positions within the PFLP. [1]
The distinction between a widely circulated image and a political life is especially important here. A photograph can make one woman visible while obscuring the institutions, disagreements and everyday labour around her. A history of women’s participation needs to ask not only who appeared in the headlines, but who organized care, represented communities and exercised decision-making power.
Khaled’s later organizing neither disappears behind the hijackings nor erases them. They are different parts of the same biography and require different evidence: organizational records for political roles, testimony for experience, and independent documentation for violence and its consequences.
Chapter 06 / Exile, rights and disagreement
The politics of return
In a 2014 interview with Frank Barat, Khaled placed refugee return at the centre of her politics and described her role in the PFLP’s refugee and return department. She connected refugees’ social and civil rights in their countries of residence with their continuing claims to return. She also rejected the Oslo process and said her opposition to the negotiations went back to 1991. [7]
Her 2016 Euronews interview likewise criticized the results of Oslo. These are attributed political judgments. They should not be presented as an uncontested account of every Palestinian’s position, nor should a later interview be treated as a statement recorded in 1993. [8]
Her public positions combine Palestinian self-determination and return with the socialist politics of her organization. Her record in women’s organizations and international forums also places her in debates about gender and anti-colonial solidarity. A political goal and the methods used to pursue it must be assessed separately. [1][9]
Chapter 07 / Image, memory and responsibility
The legacy of Leila Khaled
The keffiyeh, the rifle and the young woman’s face became a readily reproduced political image. The archival portrait opening this article was made by Eddie Adams in Lebanon in November 1970.
For supporters, Khaled’s image came to signify exile, resistance and women’s participation in a movement often represented through men.
Lina Makboul’s documentary, made by a Palestinian filmmaker raised in Sweden, examines the distance between an admired public image and the person behind it. The film offers another way into the question of how political icons are made, remembered and challenged. [12]
In 1948, Leila Khaled left Haifa as a child.
In her account of 1969, she saw it again from the air.
Between those moments lay twenty-one years of exile.
Her biography belongs to the history of Palestinian displacement and national self-determination. It also belongs to the history of civilian hostage-taking and the debates over political violence. Keeping those histories in view together is essential to understanding her place in the twentieth century.