I googled them and got this:
https://www.jta.org/1991/01/16/arch...-fatal-blow-with-assassination-of-two-leaders
All the other links were from the past week.
Based on that, and admitting my very poor knowledge of both conflicts, could Khalaf be compared to Gerry Adams?
So I starting doing a bit more digging and found I have a photocopy of about half of Khalaf's memoirs on my hard drive. There's a full section on Black September. Interesting read, but I can see how showing support for the guy is political suicide for someone in Corbyn's (current) position - completely unapologetic about the Munich operation, refers to the perpetrators as the "Munich heroes", claims the operation was a justified act of "revolutionary violence" rather than "terrorism" (he makes a big distinction between them), and so on. Never admits to being formally associated with Black September, but describes all the perpetrators as his friends, knew every detail of the plans, spoke with the survivors in the immediate aftermath. Blames all the deaths on Germany and Israel.
According to a source I'd trust a bit more (Yezid Sayigh -
Armed Struggle and the Search for State, really good book on Palestinian politics), Khalaf recruited the eight guys for the operation, and remained involved with Black September as leverage in a power struggle that was playing out with Arafat and the Fatah hierarchy at the time, who didn't like the heat the Black September operations were bringing on them.
On the other hand, in Khalaf's memoirs he expresses some relatively enlightened views about the conflict and the Israelis (e.g. he claims that the Arab leadership in the interwar years should have done a lot more to reach out to the Jews, definitely not the kind of thing you see many Palestinian authors write).
In another book (
The Palestinian People by Kimmerling and Migdal) the authors write:
"already in 1968, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), the man considered the head ideologue of the progressive stream of Fatah, suggested far-reaching changes in Palestinian goals that implied the need for a dialogue with the Israelis. Instead of simply calling for the creation of a Palestinian state in all of Palestine, he devised the formulation of “a democratic and secular state.” His idea was rejected by the Fatah mainstream and the PLO at the time because of its implied equality for Jews and because of sensitivity to its “secular” dimension, which could provoke confrontation with conservative Islamic elements."
Going back to the Sayigh book, the general feeling is that Khalaf became more pragmatic in later years, generally kept his distance from Arafat, and had a relationship with Western intelligence, giving them information on the Abu Nidal faction which ultimately assassinated him (and the other two guys with him that day). But I only skimmed through this bit.
So it seems Corbyn, in choosing to double down on his original explanation, may have missed an opportunity to make something of a relevant point about the political evolution of a once notorious terrorist and what it might say about the potential for peace and all that. The political price for doing so may have been very high, but probably not as high as the fallout he's after provoking with his evasiveness.