Editing Abu Nidal (section)

===Personality===
Abu Nidal was often in poor health, according to Seale, and tended to dress in zip-up jackets and old trousers, drinking whisky every night in his later years. He became, writes Seale, a "master of disguises and subterfuge, trusting no one, lonely and self-protective, [living] like a mole, hidden away from public view".<ref>Seale 1992, 56.</ref> Acquaintances said that he was capable of hard work and had a mind for finances.<ref>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=57}}</ref> [[Salah Khalaf]] (Abu Iyad), the deputy chief of Fatah who was assassinated by the ANO in 1991, knew him well in the late 1960s when he took Abu Nidal under his wing.<ref name=Seale1992p69>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=69}}</ref> He told Seale:
<blockquote>He had been recommended to me as a man of energy and enthusiasm, but he seemed shy when we met. It was only on further acquaintance that I noticed other traits. He was extremely good company, with a sharp tongue and an inclination to dismiss most of humanity as spies and traitors. I rather liked that! I discovered he was very ambitious, perhaps more than his abilities warranted, and also very excitable. He sometimes worked himself up into such a state that he lost all powers of reasoning.<ref name=Seale1992p69/></blockquote>

Seale suggests that Abu Nidal's childhood explained his personality, described as chaotic by Abu Iyad and as psychopathic by [[Issam Sartawi]], the late Palestinian heart surgeon.<ref>{{harvnb|Melman|1987|p=3, 51}}; {{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=57}}</ref><ref name="Hirst20Aug2002">{{cite web |author=[[David Hirst (journalist)|Hirst, David]] |date=20 August 2002 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/aug/20/guardianobituaries.israel |title=Abu Nidal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202112948/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/aug/20/guardianobituaries.israel|archive-date=2 February 2017 |work=The Guardian |url-status=live |access-date=7 July 2024}}</ref> His siblings' scorn, the loss of his father, and his mother's removal from the family home when he was seven, followed by the loss of his home and status in the conflict with Israel, created a mental world of plots and counterplots, reflected in his tyrannical leadership of the ANO. Members' wives (the ANO was an all-male group) were not allowed to befriend each other, and Abu Nidal's expected his wife to live in isolation without friends.<ref>{{harvnb|Seale|1992|p=58–59}}</ref>