Personal Info
- Country of residence: Syria
Information
Known as Atallah Atalla.
Born in Beit Surik, near Jerusalem, in June 1936; also known as Atallah Atallah; attended Al-Rashidiyeh School in Jerusalem, then the Jordanian Military College; graduated as Lieutenant General and earned a certificate in war in 1963; worked in the Jordanian army and became a Major; after 1967, Chief of Staff of the King Talal Brigades in Irbid; joined Fateh; went to Baghdad, where he trained the fedayeen; then moved to Jordan; was given command of the Fateh forces in South Lebanon from spring 1971; was asked by Yasser Arafat to turn the guerrilla forces into a conventional army in July 1971 and was head of central operations in Lebanon; in charge of planning and implementation of the “Himmeh” battles (located between Syria and Jordan) against the Israeli army; was head of the Palestinian delegation to the negotiations with representatives of the Lebanese Army at the Milkart Hotel in Beirut in 1973; appointed by Arafat as head of Fateh military intelligence in Lebanon in 1974; member of the Palestinian Revolutionary Council, the PNC, the Higher Palestinian Military Council, and the Fateh Higher Committee; headed a Fateh inquiry committee into its conduct during the Lebanon war; was critical of Arafat’s policies and his handling of the conflict in Southern Lebanon; came under wide-ranging criticism during the Fateh rebellion in 1983 for his role in the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon and was dismissed from his post by the Fateh Central Committee; formed a rival faction of Fateh in Jordan together with other Fateh dissidents on 24 April 1986; promoted a peaceful solution and an independent Palestinian state with confederal relations with Jordan; was dismissed as Asst. Chief-of-Staff and PNC member by a PLO Supreme Military Council meeting in Baghdad in April 1986; survived an assassination attempt in early 1987 in Jordan; retired from politics in the late 1980s and settled in Syria.
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