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Posted on November 12, 2000
al-Hasan, Khalid
Abu Sa'id; founder and leading member
of Fatah
1928-1994
Khalid Muhammad al-Hasan was born the eldest of six children to a prominent Sunni Muslim family in HAIFA during the British PALESTINE MANDATE.
Employed by the British military at the end of the Mandate, he was evacuated to the Sinai peninsula in May 1948. The following year, he rejoined his family in Sidon, Lebanon, where they had been forced into exile. In 1950 he moved to Damascus, where he worked as a private tutor until his arrest for involvement in Islamist politics.
A1-Hasan left Syria in 1952 for KUWAIT, where he would continue to reside until the GULF CRISIS, 1990-1991. The following year, he joined the civil service as a typist at the Kuwait Development Board. He was in rapid succession promoted to the position of assistant general-secretary, then to that of assistant general-secretary of the Planning Board, and finally to the key position of general secretary of the Municipal Council Board.
Because of his major role in the development of Kuwait, he was one of the few Palestinians to acquire Kuwaiti citizenship.
It was in Kuwait that al-Hasan first met YASIR ARAFAT and KHALIL AL-WAZIR (also known as Abu Jihad) and formed part of the core that later in that decade founded FKDMd. A member of its Central Committee (and ex officio of its subsequently established Revolutionary Council) from the outset until his death, al-Hasan was during its formative years frequently at odds with Arafat; he led the faction that insisted on a collective rather than individualistic leadership and opposed a
premature initiation of military operations. Arafat and al-Wazir, crucially supported by al-Hasan's brother, HANI AL-HASAN, emerged victorious when they persuaded Fatah to launch military operations on January 1, 1965. Largely as a result of the prestige he derived from his decision, Arafat ultimately settled the question of leadership style in his favor as well. After Fatah assumed control of the PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (PLO) in 1968-69, al-Hasan served on its Executive Committee from 1969 to 1973, when he was also the director of the PLO's Political Department. He thereafter filled the post of chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the PALESTINE NATIONAL COUNCIL (PNC) until his death. No less importantly, al-Hasan in 1969 forged Fatah's first official links with Saudi Arabia, and within Fatah thereafter consistently advocated coordination with Saudi policy and a crucial link between the movement and the Gulf monarchies.
A senior adviser to Arafat throughout the 1970s and 1980s despite their differences, and addition ally an early convert to the concept of a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, al-Hasan during this period often served as a roving ambassador and troubleshooter for the PLO and used his considerable diplomatic and public relations skills to spearhead its diplomatic offensive in the West.
Al-Hasan early emerged as the leading conservative within Fatah (and therefore the PLO). His opposition to a 1973 PNC resolution to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy led him to resign from the PLO Executive Committee, and in 1990 he definitively broke with Arafat because of the PLO chair's costly embrace of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Husayn. Stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after the GULF CRISIS, 1990-1991, nevertheless, al-Hasan moved to Morocco, from where he launched an unsuccessful challenge against Arafat.
Although al-Hasan rose to international prominence as a voice of Palestinian
moderation, he condemned the September 13, 1993, Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles on Interim
Self Government Arrangements as a violation of internationally recognized Palestinian national rights that could not serve as a basis for a just peace, and that had furthermore not been submitted to the PNC for debate and ratification. He died of cancer on October 8, 1994.
In addition to numerous interviews and press statements, al-Hasan published several booklets in Arabic as well as one in English setting out his views on a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Muin Rabbani
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian {sic] Liberation
Organization; People, Power and Politics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Hart, Alan. Arafat; Terrorist or Peacemaker? London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.
al-Hassan, Khaled. Grasping the Nettle of Peace: A Senior Palestinian Figure Speaks Out. London: Saqi Books, 1992.
The above was quoted from Encyclopedia Of The Palestinians edited by Philip Mattar
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