The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has published Difficult Paths: The Palestinian National Movement in the Life of Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), 1933-1971, (481 pages) by Mueen al-Taher and Mona Awadallah.
The book examines the eventful life of Palestinian resistance figure Salah Khalaf, from his birth in 1933 up until 1971. Known as Abu Iyad, Khalaf lived a life intimately entwined with the trajectory and deep transformations of the Palestinian national movement. This volume traces his upbringing in Jaffa and as a refugee in Gaza, then dwells at length on his early involvement in national and student activism. It goes on to narrate the foundational role he played in launching the Palestinian National Liberation Movement—better known as Fatah—and shaping its approaches to resistance and politics, with his firm but pragmatic vision and a commitment to armed struggle as a means of achieving the democratic state that was his dream.
In his political life, Abu Iyad was known as the “man of secret missions” and the man who guarded the PLO’s secrets. Yet he presented himself as realistic and honest to himself and his cause. The book is based on a vast archive of source documents and recordings that he left behind, which shed light on his personality and career—as well as opening the door to a re-reading of the experience of the contemporary Palestinian national movement.
The authors note that while Salah Khalaf did not leave behind a handwritten memoir, he recorded an oral account of the first 44 years of his life in 1979, from his departure from Jaffa to his struggles Gaza, Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, until he settled in exile. His archive, preserved in the ACRPS “Palestine Memory” collection, contains some 325 diverse recordings, including seven personal recordings for his family, and more than 3,500 documents written in his own hand, including letters, reports, operational plans, articles, and minutes of meetings, as well as dozens of video recordings. A further portion of this archive was lost after his assassination in Tunisia, and its fate remains unknown to this day.
Abu Iyad had insisted that he would not write his memoirs while he was still actively involved in politics, and that he would rather postpone it until after his retirement. Given his assassination in 1991, he did not leave behind a complete autobiography. Rather, his story reached us through those recordings and through the lengthy interviews he conducted with the French journalist Eric Rouleau, which were later published as “My Home My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle” (Palestinien sans patrie : entretiens avec Éric Rouleau), a book that Abu Iyad described as a “long journalistic investigation” rather than a personal memoir.
Al-Taher and Awadallah’s volume is not a biography in the direct sense, but rather an academic work of research based on recordings, documents and the materials preserved by Abu Iyad’s family, all supported by interviews and various other sources. The authors built the work on seven main family recordings as well as those of Rouleau, whose book they used to fill certain gaps. They also reviewed various parts of the literature and historical sources.
This process produced a comprehensive picture of the journey of the Palestinian national movement, through the life story of Salah Khalaf, who remains the focal point and essence of the narrative, as well as a prominent symbol of the Palestinian revolution throughout its most difficult, decisive stages.
