Ramallah -
On the road to freedom, the Palestinians, in their struggle since the Nakba in 1948, have sacrificed more than 100,000 martyrs, including prominent leaders who were assassinated by the occupation and its intelligence arms.
And in honor of their souls, the Palestinians commemorate the "Palestinian Martyr's Day" on January 7 of each year.
The PLO approved the addition of this occasion to the Palestinian agenda in 1969, and linked it to the rise of the first martyr in the contemporary Palestinian revolution, Ahmed Musa Salameh, on January 7, 1965, after his participation in its first operation, "the bombing of the Eilabun Tunnel."
Palestinian statistics indicate that 230 Palestinians were killed in 2022, of whom 53 were killed during the Israeli aggression on Gaza in August.
According to the "National Campaign to Recover the Bodies of the Martyrs", the occupation is holding the bodies of 114 martyrs in refrigerators, and 254 in what are known as "number graves", which are graves topped with a metal plate bearing the number of the security file of its owner.
Among the historically martyrs of Palestine were prominent leaders whose assassination occurred in January.
Below we review the most prominent of them:
1973 - Hussein Bashir Abu Al-Khair
The Israeli Mossad assassinated the representative of the "Fatah" movement in Cyprus, Hussein Bashir Abu al-Khair, on January 24, 1973, by detonating a bomb planted in his room in a hotel in the Cypriot capital.
Abu al-Khair was born in the city of Acre in 1943, and left Palestine during the Nakba. From Lebanon, he began his educational and then political career by joining the Fatah movement in 1966.
1979 - Ali Hassan Salameh
Ali Hassan Salameh was assassinated on January 22, 1979, by detonating his car in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, after a Mossad team managed to booby-trap a Volkswagen car with explosives, and when Salameh's car passed by, it was detonated, killing him and 4 of his companions.
Before that, Israel attempted to assassinate Salama in July 1973 in Norway, but the assassination victim was a Moroccan immigrant.
Salama was an escort of Yasser Arafat and responsible for his security, and he was accused of being the mastermind of the "Munich" process, in order to barter for Palestinian prisoners detained in the occupation cells.
Israel listed his name among 12 Palestinians accused of involvement in the attack.
In the Munich operation, the Palestinian "Black September" group kidnapped the players of the Israeli Olympic delegation, and during an exchange of fire, the Israeli athletes and 5 of their kidnappers were killed.
Salah Khalaf "Abu Iyad" accompanied by Saad Sayel "Abu Al-Walid" in a street in Beirut - 1982.
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- Pictures of Palestine (@PalestinianPic) February 3, 2022
1991- Abu Iyad, Abu Al-Hol and Al-Omari
On January 14, 1991, 3 of the most prominent leaders of the "Fatah" movement were assassinated, during a meeting in the home of one of them in Tunis, by a person named "Hamza Abu Zaid", pushed by the dissident leader of Fatah, "Abu Nidal".
The three leaders are members of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement: Salah Khalaf "Abu Iyad", Hayel Abdel Hamid "Abu Al-Hol", and Fakhri Al-Omari "Abu Muhammad", one of Abu Iyad's assistants.
According to a previous investigation by Al-Jazeera, the truth about what was published about the assassination is still incomplete today, and none of the possible options has been confirmed as to who is behind the perpetrator.
Salah Khalaf “Abu Iyad”
: He was born in the city of Jaffa in 1933, and his family was displaced in the 1948 Nakba to Gaza, then he moved to Egypt for the purpose of university studies, and from there he began his political career through the General Union of Palestinian Students, then Abu Iyad became one of the most prominent founding leaders For the "Fatah" movement in Kuwait, to which he went as a teacher in 1951, along with Yasser Arafat, Khaled Al-Hassan, Salim Al-Za'noun, Farouk Al-Qaddumi and others.
Hayel Abd al-Hamid "Abu al-Hol"
: He was born in 1937 in the city of Safed, and his family was displaced to Syria during the Nakba. He was one of the first participants in the founding of the "Fatah" movement.
Fakhri Al-Omari:
Born in Jaffa in 1936, he worked in the leadership of the security apparatus of the Palestinian revolution, participated in leading a number of operations, and was assassinated while he was trying to protect the martyr Abu Iyad.
Yahya Ayyash founded a wave of bombing attacks against Israel in the mid-1990s (Reuters)
1996 - Yahya Ayyash
On January 5, 1996, and after months of persecution, Israel assassinated the military commander of the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed "Engineer No. 1", by detonating a mobile phone he was using. While he was in a house in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel accused Ayyash of being responsible for a series of bombing operations in response to the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in Hebron in 1994, and he was one of the first to include bombing operations in the conflict.
Ayyash was born in the village of Rafat, near the city of Salfit, in the northern occupied West Bank, in 1966. He joined Birzeit University to study electrical engineering, where he was active within the framework of the Islamic Bloc, the student wing of Hamas.
2002- Raed Al-Karmi
On January 14, 2002, Israel assassinated Raed al-Karmi, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement, by detonating an explosive device - according to the most likely accounts - while he was passing through a street in the eastern neighborhood of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
Al-Karmi was born on January 28, 1974, and he was subjected to unsuccessful assassination attempts after he was accused of being responsible for operations that killed a number of Israelis at the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada.
2002- Yousef Al-Sorkaji
On January 22, 2002, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Yusef Al-Sorkaji, and 4 other members of the Brigades were assassinated by bombing a residential apartment in Nablus, then storming it and shooting them.
Al-Sorkaji was born in Nablus in 1962, and holds a bachelor's degree in Sharia from the University of Jordan. He was one of the deportees of Hamas to Marj al-Zuhur in 1992, and was arrested several times by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Israel assassinated Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, along with 13 of his family (Reuters)
2009- Nizar Rayan
On January 2, 2009, the occupation army assassinated, with two missiles from an F-16 aircraft, the prominent leader of Hamas, Nizar Rayan.
The bombing led to the deaths of his wives and 11 of his children, and the destruction of his 4-storey house in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Ryan was known for his public appearance, wearing military uniform, and standing by the fighters in the field.
He was born on March 6, 1959, and worked as a professor in the Department of Prophetic Hadith at the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion at the Islamic University in Gaza, and was arrested several times by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
2009- Saeed Siam
On January 15, the prominent leader of the Hamas movement, Saeed Siam, was killed in an Israeli raid during the aggression on Gaza in 2009, and the raid led to the death of one of his brothers.
Said Muhammad Siam was born on July 22, 1959 in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, to a family that immigrated from Ashkelon. He obtained a diploma in teaching science and mathematics and a bachelor's degree in Islamic education. He was arrested by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Siam took over the Palestinian Ministry of Interior after his movement won the 2006 elections, and established the "Executive Force" in the Gaza Strip.
2010- Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated on January 19, 2010 in a hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Al-Mabhouh was born on February 14, 1960 in the Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip. He left the Strip in 1989, after the Israeli occupation discovered his involvement in the kidnapping of two soldiers for the purpose of exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners in 1988.