Abu Ali Iyad

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

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). He was killed in action at 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.

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

Fatah command 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Commander in Jordan He moved to Jordan in 1968 where he trained Fatah forces in Ajlun. Palestinian factions did not heed his calls and their military bases in Amman were shelled by Jordanian forces. On September 17, an emergency meeting of PLO factions was held with the majority of those attending favoring confrontation with King Hussein's troops. Supporting al-Wazir, who was one of the few delegates to have reservations, Abu Ali Iyad argued against confrontation and warned that expectations of Syrian intervention on the side of the Palestinians was improbable. The Jordanians succeeded in defeating PLO forces in Amman and about 2,000 Palestinian guerrillas under al-Wazir's leadership evacuated the city northward to Ajlun.

Abu Ali Iyad was part of the field command there along with al-Wazir. They headed a force of roughly 2,500 guerrillas in the hilly terrain around Ajlun and Jerash. Hussein personally offered to allow Abu Ali Iyad to depart unharmed if he abandoned his fighters. He refused and Hussein ordered his troops to track down and kill him within the framework of routing out remaining PLO forces in northern Jordan. The PLO claimed he was captured and tortured to death by Jordanian forces prior. Another version of events by Abu Ali's partisans was that the Jordanian prime minister at the time, Wasfi Tal, was personally responsible for his torture.

His partisans sought vengeance for his killing and a splinter group developed within Fatah consisting of men from the Tiger Cubs and other Fatah dissidents. On November 28, one of his former Tiger Cubs, Munshir al-Khalifa, assassinated Tal in Cairo. According to Seale, this was the first attack carried out by the BSO.