Birth: 1/1/1944 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Haifa in April 1944; fled with her family to Lebanon during the 1948 War; grew up in Sour Refugee Camp; became an activist of the ANM in 1956; enrolled at the AUB in 1962, where she was also involved with the GUPS; for lack of funding, was unable to continue her education and went to Kuwait in 1963 to assume a teaching position; was there recruited to the PFLP in 1968; joined its Special Operations Squad and received paramilitary training in Amman; hijacked a TWA flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv during a stopover in Rome on 29 Aug. 1969, diverting the plane to Damascus where it was destroyed; after a 44-day stand-off, Israel released two Syrian prisoners of war in exchange for two Israeli hostages; participated in another hijacking of an El Al airplane on 6 Sept. 1970, but was overpowered and the pilot diverted the aircraft to London where she was detained by British police; freed a little later on 1 Oct. when Britain, West Germany and Switzerland exchanged captured Palestinians for 310 civilian hostages who were held in four simultaneous hijackings in Jordan; returned to Beirut and joined a combat unit; escaped a bed-bomb believed to be planted by the Mossad, but her sister was shot dead on Christmas Day 1976; became a member of the PFLP’s Central Committee; member of the PNC; led a PLO delegation to the UN Decade for Women conference in Copenhagen in 1980; enrolled at a university in Russia for two years in the early 1980s, but was ordered by the PFLP to combat in Lebanon before completing her studies; was elected first Secretary of the Palestinian Popular Women’s Committees (PPWC) in 1986; lived in Damascus in the early 1990s, then settled in Amman, where she works as a teacher; entered mainstream Palestinian politics but remained PFLP member; in Feb. 1996, was allowed by Israel briefly to enter Palestinian-ruled areas, or at least the Gaza Strip, to vote on amending the Palestinian charter; has written several articles as well as her autobiography My People Shall Live (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973).
