The history of September 11 did not begin on September 11, 2001.
Long before the attacks, a transnational jihadist movement was developing through Afghanistan and Pakistan. It built recruiting pipelines, training camps, financing structures, ideological networks and personal relationships that would eventually help produce al Qaeda and the environment from which the 9/11 conspiracy emerged.
Several Palestinians and people of Palestinian origin appear in that history.
Their roles were very different. Some were influential ideologues. Some helped build jihadist organizations and infrastructure. Others trained militants, facilitated separate terrorist plots or operated within networks that overlapped with al Qaeda.
Among the most significant were Abdullah Azzam and Abu Zubaydah, alongside figures including Raed Hijazi, Khalil Deek, Khadr Abu Hoshar, Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh.
Their stories reveal a Palestinian thread running through parts of the wider jihadist ecosystem that preceded 9/11.
Abdullah Azzam: The Palestinian Who Helped Build the Afghan Jihadist Network
Abdullah Azzam is arguably the most consequential Palestinian figure in the history surrounding the rise of global jihadism.
Born in Mandatory Palestine in 1941, Azzam became one of the leading advocates for Muslims around the world to join the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Azzam founded Maktab al Khidmat, the Services Bureau, which became an important organization for supporting foreign fighters traveling to the Afghan jihad.
Osama bin Laden worked closely with him.
The organization helped create an international infrastructure around the Afghan war, bringing together recruits, money, guesthouses and logistical support.
Azzam’s significance was also ideological. He promoted an international conception of jihad that helped inspire a generation of militants.
His influence reaches directly into the biographies of men who would later build al Qaeda.
And there is another striking connection.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Worked for Azzam
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would eventually become the principal architect of the September 11 attacks.
Years earlier, he had entered the Afghan jihadist world in which Azzam was one of the dominant figures.
The 9/11 Commission recorded that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he performed administrative duties for Azzam after fighting the Soviets.
That creates a documented personal link between one of the most influential Palestinian jihadist organizers of the 1980s and the man who would eventually design the 9/11 operation.
The distinction in timing is important. Azzam was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, years before the 9/11 conspiracy developed.
His place in this history is therefore not as a planner of September 11, but as an ideological and organizational figure in the jihadist movement through which future al Qaeda figures passed.
Abu Zubaydah: A Palestinian at the Center of the Afghan Militant Infrastructure
Another major Palestinian figure in this history is Abu Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn.
The 9/11 Commission identified him as Palestinian.
Abu Zubaydah became deeply involved in the infrastructure surrounding foreign jihadists traveling to and training in Afghanistan.
One of the most important locations associated with his network was the Khaldan training camp.
Khaldan trained militants from numerous countries. It was not simply an al Qaeda camp, and the historical record shows important organizational distinctions between Abu Zubaydah’s network and bin Laden’s organization.
But the two worlds interacted.
The 9/11 Commission’s underlying material describes reciprocal recruitment between the networks surrounding Khaldan and bin Laden.
That makes Abu Zubaydah important to understanding the militant ecosystem from which al Qaeda recruited and developed personnel.
His story also became one of the most controversial episodes of the American response to 9/11.
After his capture in Pakistan in 2002, US officials portrayed him as an extremely senior al Qaeda figure. Some early government claims went considerably further than the evidence ultimately supported.
Later government records substantially revised that picture.
The reliable connection is therefore not that Abu Zubaydah masterminded September 11. It is that a Palestinian militant operated an important component of the Afghan jihadist infrastructure that intersected with al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
Khadr Abu Hoshar: A Palestinian Extremist Connected to Abu Zubaydah
Khadr Abu Hoshar appears directly in the 9/11 Commission’s account of another major terrorist conspiracy.
The Commission described him as a Palestinian extremist.
On November 30, 1999, Jordanian intelligence intercepted a telephone conversation between Abu Hoshar and Abu Zubaydah.
Abu Hoshar was involved in preparations for terrorist attacks in Jordan around the millennium.
The conspirators considered American, Israeli and other targets.
This network was disrupted before the attacks could be carried out.
Abu Hoshar’s importance to the broader story comes from the relationships exposed by the investigation. His cell was connected to Abu Zubaydah and to militants who had passed through Afghanistan.
Raed Hijazi: From Palestinian Family to Khaldan
Raed Hijazi was born in California to Palestinian parents.
He traveled into the Afghan jihadist environment and trained at Khaldan.
Hijazi later became a central participant in the Jordan millennium conspiracy alongside Abu Hoshar.
According to the 9/11 Commission’s reconstruction, the conspirators recruited additional participants and arranged for recruits to travel to Afghanistan with assistance from Abu Zubaydah’s network.
They surveyed potential targets and developed plans for attacks.
The Jordanian authorities ultimately broke up the conspiracy.
Hijazi’s biography illustrates the international nature of the network: a man born in the United States to Palestinian parents traveled to Afghanistan for militant training and later became involved in preparations for terrorist attacks in Jordan.
Khalil Deek: The Palestinian American Technical Facilitator
Khalil Said Deek provides another window into the same ecosystem.
Deek was born in Jenin and later became a US citizen.
He became associated with the militant infrastructure around Khaldan and Derunta and was described in the research as an instructor and technical figure.
One particularly important contribution was an electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Jihad, a collection containing material useful for militant operations.
Deek was also connected financially and personally to Abu Zubaydah’s network, including through a shared bank account in Peshawar.
His case attracted substantial attention from American investigators.
Yet investigators ultimately did not establish that Deek belonged to al Qaeda’s inner circle.
His significance lies instead in the technical and organizational infrastructure surrounding jihadist militants during the years before September 11.
Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj: From the West Bank to the 1993 World Trade Center Plot
Another Palestinian appearing in this wider history is Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj.
Ajaj was born in Jerusalem and raised in the West Bank.
He trained in bomb making at Khaldan under Ramzi Yousef.
Yousef would become the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was also the uncle of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Ajaj was convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy.
This places a Palestinian militant inside the history of an earlier attempt to attack the same New York landmark that al Qaeda would destroy eight years later.
The relationship between the 1993 bombing and 9/11 is especially notable because of the family connection between Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But the two attacks were separate conspiracies.
Ajaj’s established terrorist involvement concerns the 1993 attack.
Mohamed Sadeek Odeh: A Palestinian Heritage Member of al Qaeda
Mohamed Sadeek Odeh represents a different category because his connection to al Qaeda itself is much clearer.
Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Jordan, Odeh was of Palestinian heritage.
He joined al Qaeda in the early 1990s.
Odeh later became directly involved in the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, part of the coordinated al Qaeda attacks against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Those bombings killed more than 200 people and demonstrated al Qaeda’s ability to organize mass casualty attacks against American targets years before September 11.
Odeh was arrested in 1998 and later convicted in the United States.
His story establishes something important about the Palestinian presence in the jihadist landscape of the era: Palestinian heritage individuals were not confined to ideological or peripheral networks. At least one became an established member of al Qaeda and participated in a major al Qaeda terrorist operation.
His imprisonment years before September 11, however, separates his established terrorist activity from the 9/11 conspiracy itself.
A Palestinian Thread Through Several Generations of Jihadism
Put these biographies together and a pattern becomes visible.
Abdullah Azzam helped create the ideological and organizational infrastructure of the Afghan jihad and worked with Osama bin Laden. The future 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed performed administrative work for him.
Abu Zubaydah operated within the Afghan militant training and travel infrastructure that interacted with al Qaeda.
Khadr Abu Hoshar and Raed Hijazi belonged to a terrorist network connected to Abu Zubaydah and the Afghan training environment.
Khalil Deek provided technical material and operated within the same broader infrastructure.
Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj trained under Ramzi Yousef before participating in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy.
Mohamed Sadeek Odeh went further still, becoming an actual al Qaeda member and participating in the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Nairobi.
These men did not all belong to one organization. They did not all know each other. They were not all involved in the same plots.
But their biographies repeatedly intersect with the people, institutions, camps and ideas that shaped the jihadist movement during the years before September 11.
The Connection the Historical Record Supports
The Palestinian component of this history should neither be exaggerated nor erased.
The evidence supports a Palestinian presence within important parts of the international jihadist environment that developed during the Afghan war and the decade that followed.
It includes Abdullah Azzam’s enormous ideological and organizational influence, Abu Zubaydah’s militant infrastructure, Palestinian origin terrorists connected to Khaldan, the Jordan millennium conspiracy, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an established Palestinian heritage member of al Qaeda involved in the 1998 embassy bombings.
Most strikingly, it includes a documented relationship between Abdullah Azzam and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed long before Mohammed became the architect of September 11.
That does not make these men members of the 9/11 conspiracy.
It does make them part of the much longer history of people, ideas and networks that formed the jihadist world from which 9/11 eventually emerged.
