Born in 1934 and fled in 1948 from Jaffa, Trained in Gaza from 1951. Studied in Cairo in the 1950s, founder, member and Arafat's assistant of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in Egypt (1952), Fatah founder member (1958/59), PLO's security and counterintelligence executive officer, spiritual godfather and chief of Black September Organization, principal Fatah ideologue, before being assassinated on January 14, 1991 in Tunis, PLO's third highest ranking member after Arafat and Abu Jihad.