Abu Ali Iyad

Abu Ali Iyad was born in Qalqilya in the present-day West Bank in 1934 when Palestine was under the British Mandate.

He was educated there, graduating from high school in 1953 and taught at schools in the city and nearby Azzun.

A year later, he moved to Baquba, Iraq where he enrolled in a teacher training program.

He left Iraq the same year, moving to Saudi Arabia to teach there afterward.

In 1962, he had a job as a teacher in Algeria.

After a career of teaching in the West Bank, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, Abu Ali Iyad was recruited into the paramilitary group, Fatah, by Khalil al-Wazir in 1964 after graduating from an Algerian military training course.

A year later, he became one of Fatah's first leaders in Syria along with al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat.

During his time there, Abu Ali Iyad gained a position on the group's top political body, supervised its main guerrilla training camp in Daraa and set up a military intelligence headquarters.

As a Fatah field commander, he fought Israeli forces at the Battle of Karameh, gaining a reputation as an unyielding commander.

Abu Ali Iyad was also a leading organizer and participant in guerrilla raids against Israeli localities.

He was one of the last Palestinian commanders to fight the Jordanian Army in the aftermath of Black September (also known as the Jordanian Civil War).

However, he soon sought and received training by the Algerian Army, graduating from its training course in the summer of 1964.

While in Algeria, Abu Ali Iyad was recruited into the Palestinian nationalist paramilitary organization Fatah by the leader of its armed wing Khalil al-Wazir.

He adopted his nom de guerre after joining.

Fatah at the time was divided politically with the more non-violent leadership based in Kuwait and those supporting attacks against Israel based in Syria.

Abu Ali Iyad, along with al-Wazir, Yasser Arafat, and three others in the Syrian camp, formed the organization's "emergency" field command in Damascus in 1965.

A year later al-Wazir, Arafat, and much of the Fatah military leadership were arrested by Syrian authorities loyal to Hafez al-Assad (who was Defense Minister at the time) as suspects in the murder of a pro-Assad paramilitary leader, Yusef Urabi.

As a result, Abu Ali Iyad, al-Wazir's wife Intissar al-Wazir and fellow Fatah commander Ahmad Attrush were put in charge of Fatah's leadership in Syria.

They formed a secret committee whose purpose was maintaining the military operations of Fatah's armed wing, al-Assifa, against Israel, launching attacks from Lebanon and Jordan and thus co-opting al-Assad's efforts to circumvent their activity.

Abu Ali Iyad himself was arrested later by the Syrian authorities.

He was released along with Arafat and two other Fatah leaders in August.

Abu Ali Iyad then met al-Assad in person to sign an agreement on the terms of Fatah's presence and activities in Syria.

Following the release of the rest of Fatah's leadership, the Central Committee of Fatah—the organization's highest decision-making body, was reformed.

Two of Arafat's rivals lost their positions in the new central committee and were replaced by his allies, Abu Ali Iyad and Salah Khalaf, tilting the balance of power within Fatah towards Syria instead of Kuwait.

Abu Ali Iyad's position gave him responsibility for al-Assifa's operations against Israel from Syria and Lebanon.

By the end of the year, he had personally led raids against a number of villages in northeastern Israel, including Kfar Giladi, Manara, Margaliot, and Beit Yosef.

In the latter village, his unit was responsible for wounding two civilians and destroying three houses by explosives.

Also after his release, in 1966, Abu Ali Iyad became the chief military instructor of a training camp for Fatah recruits in the city of Hama in central Syria.

He modeled it based on the Algerian training camp he graduated from.

Most of his pupils were university students who would soon form Fatah's new guerrilla force.

Abu Ali Iyad's course was the only one of its kind run by Fatah itself (often commanders would train in Algeria) and it provided the bulk of commanders for the group's guerrilla units for the next decade.

These mostly young recruits became known as "Tiger Cubs."

Among their ranks, Abu Ali Iyad gained a reputation for enforcing strict discipline.

According to British Middle East expert, Patrick Seale, he also had a "fierce appearance" that left his soldiers in "awe"; after a malfunction while he was experimenting with explosives, he lost an eye and damaged one of his legs.

In 1968, Abu Ali Iyad set up a Fatah headquarters for military intelligence in Dera'a, southern Syria.

Its principal task was to penetrate the Jordanian Army and security agencies.

He moved to Jordan in 1968 where he trained Fatah forces in Ajlun.

Walid Ahmad Nimr (وليد أحمد نمر; 1934 – July 23, 1971), better known by his nom de guerre Abu Ali Iyad (أبو علي إياد), was a senior Palestinian field commander based in Syria and Jordan during the 1960s and early 1970s.

He was killed in the countryside around Ajlun and Jerash by Jordanian forces during the Ajlun offensive in July 1971.

His partisans claimed that he was executed, and as retaliation, they assassinated Jordanian prime minister Wasfi al-Tal four months after Abu Ali Iyad's death.