Imad Mughniyeh was born in 1962 in the Lebanese Shi'ite village of Tayr Dibba to a poor family of olive and lemon harvesters. He moved to Beirut as a child and despite his religious affiliation, he became active in the predominantly Sunni Palestinian al-Fatah movement.
In Lebanese Palestinian reports, Mughniyeh was even described as participating in the unit of bodyguards protecting then-PLO chief Yasser Arafat. But after the PLO chairman and his fighters were forced to leave Lebanon following the Israeli invasion in 1982 just three years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran Mughniyeh returned to his own religious cohort and joined Hezbollah, "The Party of God," a heavily armed Lebanese faction established and nurtured by Iran.