As I mentioned in my introductory blog for the series, it’s now nearly seven years since I brought the tentative idea of a Leila Khaled biography to David Castle of Pluto. It’s almost four years since I conducted the week of interviews – in a 40+ degree heatwave in Jordan, with no air-conditioning, during Ramadan and with a memorably unpleasant traveller’s lurgy – which form the backbone of the book. In researching it, I’ve spanned secondary materials ranging from records of the heyday of the Palestinian secular resistance to lurid and deeply distasteful Israeli writings celebrating the Mossad’s notorious assassination squads. And in following up that initial gruelling interview, I’ve had to get used to activities which still seem only half-real, like having Skype conversations with one of the most high-profile figures in the Palestinian resistance of the 1960s and 70s.
Even before it was launched, this book has faced fierce opposition. People – including those sympathetic to Khaled’s political cause – also make assumptions about its subject matter. Most seem to expect it will engage mainly with the two most famous incidents in Leila Khaled’s life, her aeroplane hijackings of 1969 and 1970.
But in keeping with the spirit of this series, these two incidents actually have a comparatively small place in the book. Much more interesting, to my mind, are three other questions. Firstly, what brought Leila Khaled to become the world’s best-known female hijacker? Secondly, what impact have those two brief acts, and the political commitment which made her carry them out, had on the rest of her life? And thirdly, where does Leila Khaled fit into the wider Palestinian resistance movements in which she has been such a famous figure?
I hope, in allowing Leila Khaled’s own words to tell much of her story, but in also trying to put them in the context of Palestinian history, of debates around nationalism and gender, and of the place of Palestine solidarity in other contemporary global movements, I have gone a small way to answering those questions.