Editing Abu Nidal (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Jaffaview.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|alt=photograph|Abu Nidal was born in [[Jaffa]], where he was raised in a large stone house near the beach.]]
Sabri Khalil al-Banna was born in May 1937 in [[Jaffa]], on the Mediterranean coast of what was then the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]]. His father, Hajj Khalil al-Banna, owned 6,000 acres (24 km<sup>2</sup>) of orange groves situated between Jaffa and [[Ashkelon|Majdal]] (now [[Ashkelon]] in Israel).<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=45–46}}; for orange groves, {{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=57}}</ref> The family lived in luxury in a three-storey stone house near the beach, later used as an Israeli military court.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=45–46}}; for the military court, image between 122 and 123.</ref> Muhammad Khalil al-Banna, Abu Nidal's brother, told [[Yossi Melman]]:
{{quote|My father ... was the richest man in Palestine. He marketed about ten percent of all the citrus crops sent from Palestine to Europe—especially to England and Germany. He owned a summer house in [[Marseille]], France, and another house in [[İskenderun]], then in Syria and afterwards Turkey, and a number of houses in Palestine itself. Most of the time we lived in Jaffa. Our house had about twenty rooms, and we children would go down to swim in the sea. We also had stables with [[Arabian horse]]s, and one of our homes in Ashkelon even had a large swimming pool. I think we must have been the only family in Palestine with a private swimming pool.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=45}}</ref>}}

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|quote=The kibbutz named Ramat Hakovesh has to this day a tract of land known as "the al-Banna orchard".&nbsp;...My brothers and I still preserve the documents showing our ownership of the property, even though we know full well that we and our children have no chance of getting it back.
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|source= — Muhammad al-Banna, brother of Abu Nidal<ref name=Melman1987p47>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=47}}</ref>}}

Khalil al-Banna's wealth allowed him to take several wives. In an interview with ''[[Der Spiegel]]'', Sabri stated his father had 13 wives, 17 sons and 8 daughters. Melman writes that Sabri's mother, an [[Alawites|Alawite]], was the eighth wife.<ref name=Melman1987p46>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=46}}</ref> She had been one of the family's maids as a 16-year-old girl. The family disapproved of the marriage, according to [[Patrick Seale]] and, as a result, Sabri Khalil's 12th child, was apparently looked down on by his older siblings, although in later life the relationships were repaired.<ref name=Seale1992p58>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=58}}</ref>

In 1944 or 1945, his father sent him to [[Collège des Frères de Jaffa]], a French mission school, which he attended for one year.<ref name=Melman1987p47/> When his father died in 1945, when Sabri was seven years old, the family turned his mother out of the house.<ref name=Seale1992p58/> His brothers took him out of the mission school and enrolled him instead in a prestigious, private Muslim school in Jerusalem, now known as [[Umariya Elementary School]], which he attended for about two years.<ref name=Melman1987p48>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=48}}</ref>

===1948 Palestine War===
{{further|1948 Palestine War|1948 Arab–Israeli War|1948 Palestinian exodus}}

On 29 November 1947, the [[United Nations]] resolved to [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|partition Palestine]] into an Arab and Jewish state. Fighting broke out immediately, and the disruption of the citrus-fruit business limited the family's income.<ref name=Melman1987p48/> In Jaffa there were food shortages, truck bombings, and an [[Irgun]] militia mortar bombardment.<ref>[[Benny Morris|Morris, Benny]] (2004). ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 212–213.</ref> Melman writes that the al-Banna family had had good relations with the Jewish community.<ref name=Melman1987pp48-49/> Abu Nidal's brother told Melman that their father had been a friend of Avraham Shapira, a founder of the Jewish defense organization, [[Hashomer]], stating, "He would visit [Shapira] in his home in Petah Tikva, or Shapira riding his horse would visit our home in Jaffa. I also remember how we visited Dr. Weizmann [later first president of Israel] in his home in Rehovot." However, these relationships did not help them weather the war.<ref name=Melman1987pp48-49>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=48–49}}</ref>

Just before Israeli troops took Jaffa in April 1948, the family fled to their house near Majdal, but Israeli troops arrived there too, and the family fled again. This time they went to the [[Bureij]] refugee camp in the [[Gaza Strip]], then under Egyptian control. Melman writes that the family spent nine months living in tents, depending on [[UNRWA]] for an allowance of oil, rice, and potatoes.<ref name=Melman1987p49>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=49}}</ref> The experience had a powerful effect on Abu Nidal.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=49}}; {{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=59}}</ref>

===Move to Nablus and Saudi Arabia===
The al-Banna family's commercial experience, and the money they had managed to take with them, meant they could re-establish themselves, Melman writes.<ref name=Melman1987p49/> Their orange groves were gone, now part of the new state of Israel. The family moved to [[Nablus]] in the [[West Bank]], then under Jordanian control.<ref name=Melman1987p46/> In 1955, Abu Nidal graduated from high school, joined the [[Ba'ath Party|Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party]],<ref name=Hudson1999p100/> and began a degree in engineering at [[Cairo University]], but he left after two years without a degree.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=50}}</ref> In 1960, he made his way to Saudi Arabia, where he established himself as a painter and electrician, and worked as a casual laborer for [[Saudi Aramco|Aramco]].<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=50}}; {{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=64}}</ref> His brother told Melman that Abu Nidal would return to Nablus from Saudi Arabia every year to visit his mother. It was during one such visit in 1962 that he met his wife, whose family had also fled Jaffa. Their marriage produced a son and two daughters.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=51}}</ref>

===Personality===
Abu Nidal was often in poor health, according to Seale, and tended to dress in zip-up jackets and old trousers, drinking whisky every night in his later years. He became, writes Seale, a "master of disguises and subterfuge, trusting no one, lonely and self-protective, [living] like a mole, hidden away from public view".<ref>Seale 1992, 56.</ref> Acquaintances said that he was capable of hard work and had a mind for finances.<ref>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=57}}</ref> [[Salah Khalaf]] (Abu Iyad), the deputy chief of Fatah who was assassinated by the ANO in 1991, knew him well in the late 1960s when he took Abu Nidal under his wing.<ref name=Seale1992p69>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=69}}</ref> He told Seale:
<blockquote>He had been recommended to me as a man of energy and enthusiasm, but he seemed shy when we met. It was only on further acquaintance that I noticed other traits. He was extremely good company, with a sharp tongue and an inclination to dismiss most of humanity as spies and traitors. I rather liked that! I discovered he was very ambitious, perhaps more than his abilities warranted, and also very excitable. He sometimes worked himself up into such a state that he lost all powers of reasoning.<ref name=Seale1992p69/></blockquote>

Seale suggests that Abu Nidal's childhood explained his personality, described as chaotic by Abu Iyad and as psychopathic by [[Issam Sartawi]], the late Palestinian heart surgeon.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=3, 51}}; {{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=57}}</ref><ref name="Hirst20Aug2002">{{cite web |author=[[David Hirst (journalist)|Hirst, David]] |date=20 August 2002 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/aug/20/guardianobituaries.israel |title=Abu Nidal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202112948/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/aug/20/guardianobituaries.israel|archive-date=2 February 2017 |work=The Guardian |url-status=live |access-date=7 July 2024}}</ref> His siblings' scorn, the loss of his father, and his mother's removal from the family home when he was seven, followed by the loss of his home and status in the conflict with Israel, created a mental world of plots and counterplots, reflected in his tyrannical leadership of the ANO. Members' wives (the ANO was an all-male group) were not allowed to befriend each other, and Abu Nidal's expected his wife to live in isolation without friends.<ref>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=58–59}}</ref>