Just Finished Reading: Leila Khaled – Icon of Palestinian Liberation by Sarah Irving (FP: 2012)

I don’t know if I actually remember it or I read about it later. I have an image in my head of that famous photograph (below) in my parent’s newspaper but that could be a false memory planted there to backfill my other vague memories. I’ve seen the three planes blowing up in the desert but that footage has been shown time and again since the 1970 event itself. I’m not sure if I was aware enough – then aged 10 – to know very much about the hijacking going on around the world and just why the Palestinians were taking them at gunpoint, flying them off to Middle-Eastern airfields and, more often than not, blowing them to pieces to bring attention to their cause. Leila Khaled hit the world’s headlines first in 1969, when her iconic photograph was taken, and then again in 1970 when her attempted hijacking of an Israeli airline failed and the plane was diverted to London (from Amsterdam) where she was arrested by the British police. Later released, much to the disgust of Israel, in exchange for the release of British hostages held on another hijacked plane she retained to the Middle East to continue the struggle against Israel and the Occupation of Gaza.

Spending much of the rest of her life in Syria (long before the Civil War), Jordan and the Lebanon she was very frustrated that her unlooked for iconic status – both inside the Palestinian Liberation orbit and throughout the West (often competing with Che for dorm wall space) – prevented her from taking up armed struggle and relegated her to the more prosaic task of organising aid for refugees and promoting the welfare of thousands of displaced women and children often under difficult conditions and gunfire. She was elected to a number of posts within the Liberation organisations and spoke for Palestinians within the UN and elsewhere. Refusing to retire, even at 75 years of age, she still fights for her people and her homeland.

This short book was definitely a work of two halves for me. Her early life and her two hijackings (plus her time in custody in Britain) I found to be really interesting but her time in the refugee camps and arguments over her feminist credentials – not so much. It was good to understand what happened to her afterwards, after her brief brush with international fame/infamy, but I did find the whole thing a bit of a slog. Although I didn’t fully skim the feminist critique I must admit that I wasn’t giving it my fullest attention. It is interesting though how young women in these situations – who are equally as able and are equally as dedicated to the particular cause they’re involved in – are criticised for giving up their femininity in order to fight as if their gender is more important than the need for people who can point an AK in the right direction. Any fighting force that turns away 50% of its population in desperate times of need is definitely doing something wrong. But, as the book, and Leila herself points out, going against centuries of cultural baggage – especially in Middle Eastern societies – will forever be an uphill struggle. Reasonable.