Ramallah, January 14, 2026 (WAFA) – Today, January 14, marks the 35th anniversary of the assassination of three leaders: Salah Khalaf “Abu Iyad,” a member of the Fatah Central Committee; Hayel Abdel Hamid “Abu al-Hol,” a member of the Fatah Central Committee; and Fakhri al-Omari “Abu Muhammad,” one of Abu Iyad’s close aides in the Unified Security Apparatus, during their attendance at a meeting at Abu al-Hol’s house in Carthage, Tunisia, in 1991 .
With the martyrdom of the leaders, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian revolution, and the Fatah movement lost three of their most loyal and skilled leaders, who had a record full of sacrifice, selflessness, and struggle against the Israeli occupation throughout the conflict until their martyrdom .
Martyr Salah Khalaf
The martyr leader Salah Khalaf “Abu Iyad” was born in the city of Jaffa in 1933. He lived the first years of his life until one day before the establishment of the Israeli entity in 1948. He and his family were forced to leave the city of Jaffa and headed to Gaza by sea and settled there with his family. He completed his secondary education there in 1951, then joined the Faculty of Science at Cairo University. In the same year, he met Yasser Arafat, who was a student at the Faculty of Engineering at the time, and the relationship between them was strengthened through the establishment of the General Union of Palestinian Students .
Salah Khalaf graduated from Dar Al-Uloom College/Department of Philosophy in 1957 AD and obtained a diploma in education and psychology. He returned to the Gaza Strip to teach and began his secret work in recruiting and organizing groups of fighters in Gaza .
In 1959, Abu Iyad moved to Kuwait to work as a teacher. This was an opportunity for him and his fellow leaders: Yasser Arafat, Khaled al-Hassan, Salim al-Za’noun, Farouk al-Qaddumi, and other activists in different countries, most notably Abu Yusuf al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and President Mahmoud Abbas, who resided in Qatar, to unite their efforts to establish the Palestinian National Liberation Movement “Fatah” to restore the Palestinians to their land and rights .
Abu Iyad’s name began to emerge as a member of the Fatah Central Committee, then as a commissioner of its security apparatus, then he took command of the organization’s special services, and since 1970 Abu Iyad has been subjected to more than one assassination attempt .
Martyr Hayel Abdel Hamid
Hayel Abdel Hamid, known as “Abu al-Houl”, was born in 1937 in the city of Safed .
He was displaced with his family in 1948 to Syria, and he enrolled in school in Damascus and was active in the demonstrations and gatherings that took place on national occasions .
In his early youth, he began to seek to form an organizational group for Palestinian refugees in Syria, and he founded the “Arab Palestine” organization in line with the prevailing nationalist trends at the time, as political organizations were prohibited in Syria at that time .
In 1957, a Palestinian movement emerged demanding that Palestinian refugees be granted the same civil rights as Syrian citizens, with the exception of citizenship and passports, in order to preserve Palestinian national identity and ensure their dignity. The Syrian parliament, then headed by Akram al-Hawrani, approved the Palestinian demand. The “Organization of Arab Palestine,” founded in Syria by Hayel Abdel Hamid in 1960, joined the organizational framework of the Fatah movement, which was preparing to announce its launch as an armed faction .
Abu al-Houl was one of the founders of the Fatah movement’s branches in Germany and Austria. He also participated in the founding of the Fatah movement in Cairo in 1964, and served as the organization’s secretary in Cairo. In 1972, he became the Fatah movement’s representative in Lebanon .
Abu al-Houl also took over the responsibility for security and information for the Fatah movement, alongside Salah Khalaf “Abu Iyad”, and served as commissioner for the occupied territories apparatus after the martyrdom of Khalil al-Wazir “Abu Jihad”, in addition to his responsibilities in the security apparatus, and continued in this until the date of his martyrdom .
Martyr Fakhri Al-Omari
Born in Jaffa in 1936, he was among the first to dedicate himself to working in the Palestinian revolution. He participated in the first security course sent by the Fatah movement to Cairo, and he participated in establishing the security and surveillance apparatus in Jordan with the martyr Abu Iyad. He worked in the leadership of the security apparatus of the Palestinian revolution, and he participated in leading a number of special and qualitative operations .
The martyr Salah Khalaf had a great influence on Fakhri al-Omari. Abu Iyad contributed greatly to spreading national thought in preparation for the establishment of the Fatah movement. He also worked to attract national youth to be the nucleus for the establishment of a purely Palestinian national movement, which is the Fatah movement .
During this period, the revolutionary thought crystallized in Al-Omari, who was also fond of sports, which enabled him to organize many national youths seeking freedom, through sports clubs, who later became the nucleus of Fatah’s military cells in the occupied territories .
The martyr Al-Omari worked as a high-ranking security official, and was the second man in the unified security apparatus headed by Abu Iyad. He was assassinated after receiving about thirty bullets while trying to catch the murderous criminal as part of his efforts to protect the martyr Abu Iyad .
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E.R.
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