Khaled al-Hassan

Khaled al-Hassan (Arabic: خالد الحسن‎‎ also known as Abu Said Arabic: أبو السعيد‎‎) (1928-1994) was an early adviser of Yasser Arafat, PLO leader and a founder of the Palestinian political and militant organization Fatah. Khaled was the older brother of Hani al-Hassan.

Al-Hassan was born in Haifa in 1928. He and his family lived there until they were exiled as refugees after Israel's capture of the city in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which he participated in on the side of Palestinian Arab forces. His family settled in Sidon, Lebanon, but he left for Egypt. He was briefly detained in Egypt "just for being Palestinian" according to him. After being released, he reunited with his family in Lebanon where he lived briefly.

In 1949 he formed the short-lasing commando group Tahrir Filastin. A year later he moved to Syria. During this time, al-Hassan worked as a teacher in Damascus and he helped found the Islamic Liberation Party in 1952. Syrian authorities threatened to arrest him that year for attempting to set up another Palestinian commando group, but he left to Kuwait. There, he worked as a civil servant, typist, and later as Secretary-General of the Municipal Council Board in the country until 1967. He was awarded Kuwaiti citizenship in the mid-1950s.

Al-Hassan was one of the original founders of Fatah and in Kuwait, he managed to establish a network of Palestinian activists. In 1962, al-Hassan, Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir and Salah Khalaf established a magazine called Filastuna, Nida' al-Hayat ("Palestine, Our Call to Life"). According to al-Hassan, the "Kuwaiti Fatah group" was known before the Fatah groups in Europe, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Gaza and Iraq because of the magazine which was based in Tripoli, Lebanon. Fatah had formed a Central Committee which became the main body of the movement and of the ten members, Hassan was one of them.

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