Her father, Nabil Salameh was an activist with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Initially he was associated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, and later he co-founded the more extreme Black September organization. During the 1982 Israeli intervention in Lebanon he went missing, with the presumption by family and friends he was captured by Israel. He has remained missing since this event, which occurred when Nadine was three years old.