Hassan Salameh (1912-2 June 1948) was a Holy War Army commander during the Palestinian Civil War and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Biography[]
Hassan Salameh was born in 1912 in Qula, Palestine, Ottoman Empire. He was a tribal sheikh, and he took part in the 1933 Palestine riots and later led rebels during the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Salameh was wounded in 1938 while blowing up the Lod-Haifa train, and he took part in Rashid Ali's 1941 coup in the Anglo-Iraqi War due to his belief in Arab nationalism. He fought against the United Kingdom for Iraq, and he was trained as a paratrooper by Nazi Germany during World War II, taking part in the failed plan to foment religious violence in Mandatory Palestine, Operation Atlas. Salameh became a commander of the Holy War Army during the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine after the war, and he was killed in Ras al-Ayn on 2 June 1948 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). His son Ali Hassan Salameh would be a major Palestinian terrorist leader during the Arab-Israeli Conflict and would mastermind the Munich Massacre in 1972.