Leila Khaled (Arabic: ليلى خالد [ˈlajla ˈxaːled]; born April 9, 1944) is a former Palestinian militant and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

At the age of 15, following in the footsteps of her brother, she joined the pan-Arab[5] Arab Nationalist Movement, originally established in the late-1940s by George Habash, then a medical student at the American University of Beirut.

Khaled spent some time teaching in Kuwait and, in her autobiography, recounted crying the day she heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

[10][8][11] Khaled has stated in interviews that she developed a fondness for the United Kingdom when her first visitor in jail, an immigration officer, wanted to know why she had arrived in the country without a valid visa.

Khaled continued to return to the UK for speaking engagements until as late as 2002, although she was refused a visa by the British embassy in 2005 to address a meeting at the Féile an Phobail in Belfast, where she was invited as a speaker.

[24][25] In November 2017, Khaled was refused entry to Rome, Italy at the Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, and was forced to return to Amman as she is a member of a group considered a terrorist organization by the Italian government.

[26] In mid September 2020, Khaled was scheduled to speak at a virtual Zoom conference at San Francisco State University hosted by Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa.