Khaled Yashruti

These people rejected the Soviet Union and Arab states close to it (The pro-Syrian Ba'ath, Algeria, Libya and South Yemen).

Many were members of the Galilean/Northern Palestinian aristocracy (such as Khaled Yashruti's father, who was the hereditary Shaykh of the Shadhiliyya Sufi brotherhood in pre-1947 Palestine).

Khaled Yashruti progressively became their leader in the mid-1960s, and became a member of the PLO leadership in 1968, two years before Fatah's commanders were expelled to Lebanon from Jordan.

Yashruti's faction had the backing of the Al-Bakr/Saddam Hussein Ba'athist government in Baghdad and was generally favorable to U.S. involvement in the Middle-East as a counterweight to the growing influence of the Soviet Union and Israel.

In parallel to his political activities, Khaled worked as a civil engineer and real estate entrepreneur in Lebanon.