Abu Nidal - Political Life

Political Life

In Saudi Arabia, he helped found a small group of young Palestinians who called themselves the Palestine Secret Organization. His political activism and vocal denunciation of Israel drew the attention of his employer, Aramco, which fired him, and then the Saudi government, which imprisoned, tortured, and expelled him as an unwelcome radical. He returned to Nablus with his wife and young family, and it was around this time that he joined Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, although the exact timing and circumstances are unknown. He worked as an odd-job man until June 1967, committed to Palestinian politics but not particularly active, until Israel won the 1967 Six-Day War, capturing the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The sight of Israeli tanks rolling into Nablus, after he had already been forced to flee from Jaffa because of the war, and from Saudi Arabia because of his activism, was a traumatic and pivotal experience for him, according to Melman, and his passive involvement in Palestinian politics was transformed into a deadly hatred of Israel.

He moved to Amman, Jordan, setting up a trading company called Impex, and joining the Fatah underground, where he was asked to choose a nom de guerre. He chose Abu Nidal, in part after his son, Nidal—it is customary in the Arab world for men to call themselves "father of" (Abu), followed by their first son's name—but also because the name means "father of the struggle". He was described by those who knew him at the time as a tidy, well-organized leader, not a guerrilla. During skirmishes in Jordan between the Palestinian fedayeen and King Hussein's troops, he stayed indoors, never leaving his office.

Impex soon became a front for Fatah activities, serving as a meeting place for members and as a conduit for funds with which to pay them. This was to become a hallmark of Abu Nidal's business career. Companies controlled by the ANO made him a rich man by engaging in legitimate business deals, while acting as cover for his political violence and his multi-million-dollar arms deals, mercenary activities, and protection rackets. Seeing his talent for organization, Abu Iyad appointed him in 1968 as the Fatah representative in Khartoum, Sudan, then to the same position in Baghdad in July 1970, just two months before Black September, when King Hussein's army drove the Palestinian fedayeen out of Jordan, with the loss of between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in just ten days. Abu Nidal's absence from Jordan during this period, where it was clear that King Hussein was about to act against the Palestinians, raised the suspicion within the movement that he was interested only in saving his own skin.