Leila Khaled was born in 1944 in Haifa, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine. Khaled's family fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Palestinian exodus, leaving her father behind. At the age of 15, Khaled became one of the first to join the radical pan-Arab Arab Nationalist Movement, originally started in the late 1940s by George Habash, then a medical student at the American University of Beirut. The Palestinian branch of this movement became the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after the 1967 Six-Day War.
On August 29, 1969 Khaled was part of a team that hijacked TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Athens, diverting the Boeing 707 to Damascus. She claims she ordered the pilot to fly over Haifa, so she could see her birthplace, which she could not visit. No one was injured, but the aircraft was blown up after hostages had disembarked. According to some media sources, the PFLP leadership thought that Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli ambassador to the United States would be on board. This was however denied by Leila Khaled and others. After this hijacking, Khaled underwent the first of several plastic surgeries intended to conceal her identity.
On August 29, 1969 Khaled was part of a team that hijacked TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Athens, diverting the Boeing 707 to Damascus. She claims she ordered the pilot to fly over Haifa, so she could see her birthplace, which she could not visit. No one was injured, but the aircraft was blown up after hostages had disembarked. According to some media sources, the PFLP leadership thought that Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli ambassador to the United States would be on board. This was however denied by Leila Khaled and others. After this hijacking, Khaled underwent the first of several plastic surgeries intended to conceal her identity.
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