Abu Musa (born about ca. 1930) left the Jordanian army in 1970 to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1983 he emerged as a leader of the hard-line PLO opposition to Yasser Arafat.

Abu Musa was born Said Musa Maragha in the West Bank area of what was then Palestine in the early 1930s. During the Arab-Jewish fighting of 1948 the Jordanian army entered the West Bank, ostensibly to help the Palestinian Arabs defend themselves. After the Palestinian Arabs were defeated, however, the Jordanians stayed on, and later annexed the West bank to their own kingdom.

When he reached adulthood, Abu Musa joined the Jordanian army. His unit participated in the Arab-Israeli War (Six Day War) of 1967, which resulted in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, along with other Arab territories.

Three years later Abu Musa found himself in the middle of the fighting between the Jordanian army and the...