Born in 1928 in Galileo, Haddad worked as a doctor in Beirut. A Christian, he joined the PFLP - founded by Georges Habbache — in 1967. He served as Habbache’s right hand man and controlled the Command of Foreign Special Operations (COSE), transforming it into the first terrorist multinational: an organization whose scale and power has only recently been matched by Al Qaida.

Inspired by Maoist ideology, the organization moved beyond the scope of the Palestinian struggle, recruiting revolutionaries world-wide. Haddad organized training camps for terrorist organizations from all over the globe and oversaw an international arms traffic. In return, non-Arab organizations supplied him with mercenaries devoted to the Palestinian cause. Little by little, the PFLP-COSE spun an ever-widening international network. Certain ‘congresses’, organized in Europe and Lebanon united diverse movements. All centered around the same ideology: communism coloured by terrorism; the same dynamic: the coordination of international terrorist acts; and the same objective: to destabilize the occidental powers and weaken their support of Israel. Following the massacre in 1972 at Lod airport in Israel by Japanese terrorists that left twenty-six dead and twenty-four wounded, Waddi Haddad found himself isolated within his own movement. He resolved to continue, waging his own war by reinforcing the ties he had maintained with certain European terrorist organizations, united despite each group’s individual cause. Over the course of eight years, COSE executed approximately thirty terrorists attacks outside Palestinian territory, resulting in forty deaths and two hundred wounded. In 1976, Waddi Haddad was forced to leave the PFLP.

His isolation and failure over past operations, notably those that took place at Entebbe and Mogadishu, took their toll: he died on March 28, 1978 in the GDR. Some believe leukemia was the cause of death, while others maintain he was poisoned by MOSSAD. The official presence of all Palestinian political leaders at his funeral revealed the ambiguous nature of his break with the more moderate branches of the Palestinian movement. As all potential successors failed in their ability to establish a strong base and alliances with important political groups, COSE vanished with the death of its charismatic leader.