Khaled, Leila (1944–)

A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Leila Ali Khaled became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s for being one of the few Arab women publicly involved in terrorist activity.

One of 13 children, Leila Khaled was only four years old when her family was forced to leave her birthplace of Haifa in Palestine due to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. They settled in a refugee camp in Tyre, Lebanon. Khaled and her siblings shared the belief that Palestine should be liberated and the refugees should be allowed to return home.

While Khaled was a teenager, she joined the Arab Nationalist Movement to fight for her beliefs. To help her struggling family, in 1963 Khaled became an English teacher in Kuwait. There, she became a member of the political group that would ...