Israel’s Hunt for the Red Prince, Ali Hassan Salameh | Al Jazeera World

As the British mandate in Palestine drew to a close in the late 1940s, clashes intensified between Palestinian and Jewish militias. When the British left and the new state of Israel was announced in May 1948, the first Arab-Israeli War was fought. In the 1950s and 60s, tension continued and armed Palestinian ’fedayeen’, many of them now refugees, mounted attacks into Israel which were met with equal force. Palestinian nationalists, including Yasser Arafat, formed the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (PLO) in 1959 - and the party became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Ali Hassan Salameh rose to the top of the Fatah Party in the 1960s and 1970s to become one of Arafat’s most trusted men. He also founded the Black September armed group which killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Munich Olympics 1972 “The Munich operation was meant to protest against the Palestinians’ exclusion from the Olympic Games,“ explains Saqr Abu Fakhr, assist