Palestinian fighter Leila Khaled sits discreetly in the backroom of an old Palestinian chemist on London’s Edgware Road. In her heyday she hijacked airplanes. Portraits of the 1970s revolutionary swathed in Arabic keffiyeh, clutching a Kalashnikov were as iconic as images of Che Guevara.
In 1969, aged 25 and armed with grenades and handguns, she became the first woman ever to hijack an airliner, diverting a TWA flight to Damascus, where she escaped after securing the release of hostages in exchange for political prisoners, and destroying the plane on the ground.
Leila went on to undergo plastic surgery, and repeat the exercise on a larger scale a year later, when she was involved in a coordinated series of hijack operations culminating in the exploding of three airliners in Jordan, and another in Egypt.
But Leila’s attempt to gain control of an El Al flight in Amsterdam went disastrously wrong. As she and her Nicaraguan accomplice Patrick Arguello attempted to storm the cabin midair, the pilot pulled the throttle, sending the plane into nosedive.
Arguello was shot dead in midair by plainclothes security guards, but Leila escaped alive, spending 28 days in Ealing Jail before she was freed in a deal between British Prime Minister Edward Heath and Egypt’s Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Laying down her arms after the birth of her first son in 1981, she continued the struggle through the Marxist politics of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while rising to be appointed to the Palestinian National Council.
At 58, she exudes a terse reserve. After a lifetime of struggle, her talk is staunch and incendiary.
We sit smoking cigarettes, as the tape runs.
Leila categorically rejects the charges of terrorism leveled at her, portraying her hijack "operations" as successful bids to attract worldwide attention to the plight of the Palestinians.
"There is a difference between terrorism and armed struggle. The first time I participated in an operation they called me a terrorist. I was young at the time and couldn’t understand. In 1948 we were screaming in agony, but nobody heard us. No one called the Zionist gangs terrorists.
"Today freedom fighters are considered terrorists, and terrorists are considered peacemakers. The capitalists have always created instruments to make people believe their lies. This is globalization, a new invention."
She recounts the story of a student from St. Andrews University in Scotland, who contacted her requesting an interview.
"A young woman called to ask if she could come to Jordan and meet me for help on her research project. I was astonished to hear that the college had set up a department for terrorism studies.
"I told her, ‘You have the wrong address. But I would like to help you, so I will give you the addresses of Sharon, Netanyahu and Bush.’
"We discussed how to change her thesis to differentiate between terrorism and rightful struggle. Palestinians have the right under international law, to struggle by all means, including armed struggle."
She exudes a mordant humor: "I wonder how many universities in the West are setting up such faculties — perhaps I will apply!
"The new generation has such advanced technology. I am familiar only with telephones — and airplanes!"
Leila has no faith in any declared US intention to back Palestinian statehood.
"Bush said it was the US vision to establish a Palestinian state, but we have known this vision for 54 years and it has come to nothing. Israel has refused to implement UN resolutions, and that has been accepted."
And she levels the "terrorist" charge back at her declared enemies. "Do you think we will believe these butchers? Israel’s Apache helicopters and F16s are manufactured in the US. Bush even declared Sharon a man of peace. That is a sick joke. These are our enemies."
She denounces the new precedents in international law — extrajudicial "targeted assassinations," punitive or "enforced deportations" and pre-emptive detentions without charge — now being set by Israel and the US.
"The Israeli government favors the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their occupied homeland," Leila asserts. "Likud and the right-wingers want any Palestinian state to be set up in Jordan. They have legalized enforced deportations. Ex-Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi held these views, and we killed him. Avigdor Lieberman, another right-wing extremist, is also calling for a ‘transfer.’"
Aged four, Leila and her parents were forced to flee her hometown of Haifa during the chaos of 1948. Years later, her sister was killed in a botched assassination by Mossad, who mistook her for Leila. And her own group’s responses will come in kind, she says, vowing terrible vengeance.
"We are against assassination, but when it is time to act, we will act, because they have assassinated us constantly for 54 years. Do you expect us to say ‘OK, we accept it’? By violence they have occupied the country, by violence we were driven out, and by violence they have established their state. As long as there is occupation there will be resistance. The Israeli government is violating international law. As long as Sharon, Netanyahu and this gang of war criminals are in control in Tel Aviv, the struggle will escalate. The bloody history of Sharon is wellknown. But his future will be bloody also. Palestinians know how to deal with such bloody people."
Out in the street we hail a taxi to the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where Leila is delivering a lecture. We climb in and, as the tape rolls, she recounts details of her hijacks.
"I had my pistol and my hand grenade," she recalls. "My comrade and I had successfully boarded the plane."
The cabby bristles visibly.
"When Patrick was killed it was terrifying. Twelve people sprung up shooting. I felt bad, very bad. I still remember him as an international martyr for freedom. He fought for a just cause."
She attempts to defend the morality of the operation: "We hijacked planes because the whole world was deaf when we were screaming from our tents, and nobody heard our suffering. Until the beginning of the revolution in 1967, Palestinians were only dealt with as people needing humanitarian aid, not as people with a cause. We had to use tactics to attract international attention.
"And afterward, the world asked ‘who are the Palestinians? Why are they doing this? How could a woman do such a thing?’ So it worked, just posing the question."
Leila’s group, the PFLP, has recently backed sending bombers on bloody resistance "operations."
"If someone chooses to explode his body among his enemies, we must ask why?" she says. "We are struggling to live peacefully in our homeland. A poor woman embroidering clothing is part of our struggle. A woman bringing up a child to live in Palestine, suffering at the checkpoints is part of our struggle. A doctor treating the wounded is part of our struggle.
"This has been a gradual massacre. They are killing and killing and killing, detaining people, destroying our homes, carving up the land, cutting down olive groves, besieging the sacred places. Pregnant women are held at checkpoints and refused access to hospitals. Children are prevented from going to school and searched as if they were suicide bombers.
"The Israelis have made life so miserable that the distance between life and death is minimized. People are dying everywhere in Palestine. If this injustice continues, then the bombings will increase."
Despite her participation in hijacks, Leila rejects the charge that she has, however unwittingly, helped inspire the kind of thinking behind the 9/11 suicide hijacks, three decades after her own "operations."
"That was an act of terror and did not serve a humanitarian cause," she says. "What we did was a means of struggle. We said why we were doing the operation. Those who killed themselves and others in New York had no cause.
"We didn’t kill anybody. On the contrary, two of our colleagues were killed. One man was even killed by Israeli security after he was caught by British police."
After 50 years of struggle, her people have little to show for their suffering.
"Where is our security?" Leila demands. "I’m now 58, and since 1944, the year I was born, I have never felt secure, even when I’m surrounded by supporters. My birthday falls on the anniversary of the 1948 Deir Yasin massacre. That is why I could never celebrate. Every month there are events that remind us of the years of bloody occupation."
And she sees little prospect that even their children will live any better. "I am a mother of two. My children have the right to dream, but what hope do they have? They are threatened because they are Palestinian. My child doesn’t have the right to live, let alone continue his studies. I would dearly love to have a university qualification.
"Do you expect my child to accept this life? Do you expect our children to speak of gardens and flowers and sunshine, when they see only Apache helicopters and F16s? I ask Bush and Blair, what do they call these tanks and bulldozers; what do they call these massacres in their language? Do you want us to answer such crimes with roses, or bury our heads?
"We do not glorify death, we are the victims of those who want to prevent us from living. We do not ask for miracles. We are not fighting for death, we are struggling for our dignity. We want to live." (Courtesy: The Friday Times)
