Son of Hamas (25 page)

“What’s your organization?”

“Hamas.”

Yes, I still identified myself as part of my family, as part of my history. But I was no longer like the other prisoners.

Hamas was still the majority. But since the start of the Second Intifada, Fatah had grown significantly, and each group had about the same number of tents. I was tired of pretending, and my newfound ethical code kept me from lying. So I decided to keep mostly to myself while I was there.

Ktzi’ot was serious wilderness. The night air echoed with the sounds of wolves and hyenas and leopards. I had heard stories of prisoners who had escaped Ktzi’ot, but no stories of anyone having survived the desert. Winter was worse than summer—freezing air and drifting snow and nothing but canvas to keep out the wind. Each tent had a moisture barrier across the roof. But some of the prisoners tore down pieces of it to make privacy curtains around their cots. The moisture from our breath was supposed to be trapped in that liner. But it just floated up and stuck to the naked canvas until it got too heavy. Then all that spit rained down on us throughout the night as we slept.

The Israelis virtually papered the camp with glue boards to try to keep the mouse population under control. Early one frosty morning while everyone else was still asleep, I was reading my Bible when I heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty bedspring. I looked under my cot and saw a mouse stuck to a glue board. What surprised me, though, was that another mouse was trying to save him without getting stuck himself. Was it his mate or a friend? I don’t know. I watched for about half an hour as one animal risked its life to save another. It moved me so much that I freed them both.

At the prison, reading materials were pretty much limited to the Qur’an and Qur’anic studies. I had only two English-language books that a friend had smuggled to me through my lawyer. I was deeply grateful to have something to read and to strengthen my English skills, but it didn’t take long for me to wear out the covers from reading the books so much. One day, I was walking around by myself when I saw two prisoners making tea. Beside them was a huge wooden box filled with novels sent by the Red Cross. And these guys were tearing up the books for fuel! I couldn’t control myself. I shoved the box away from them and started scooping up the books. They thought I wanted them so I could make my own tea.

“Are you insane?” I told them. “It took me forever to smuggle in two English-language books so I could read them, and you’re making tea with these!”

“Those are Christian books,” they argued.

“They are not Christian books,” I told them. “They’re
New York Times
best sellers. I’m sure they don’t say anything against Islam. They’re just stories about human experiences.”

They probably wondered what was wrong with the son of Hassan Yousef. He had been so quiet, mostly keeping to himself and reading. Suddenly, he was raving about a box of books. If it had been anybody else, they probably would have fought to keep their priceless fuel. But they let me have the novels, and I returned to my bed with a whole box of new treasures. I piled them around me and wallowed in them. I didn’t care what anybody thought. My heart was singing and praising God for providing me with something to read while I tried to pass the time in this place.

I read sixteen hours a day until my eyes grew weak from the poor light. During the four months I spent at Ktzi’ot, I memorized four thousand English vocabulary words.

While I was there, I also experienced two prison uprisings, far worse than the one we had at Megiddo. But God got me through it all. In fact, I experienced God’s presence more strongly in that prison than any time before or since. I may not have known Jesus as the Creator yet, but I was certainly learning to love God the Father.

* * *

On April 2, 2003—as Coalition ground troops raced toward Baghdad—I was released. I emerged as a respected leader of Hamas, a seasoned terrorist, and a wily fugitive. I had been tried by fire and proven. My risk of being burned had decreased significantly, and my father was alive and safe.

Once more I could walk openly down the streets of Ramallah. I no longer had to act like a fugitive. I could be myself again. I called my mother; then I called Loai.

“Welcome home, Green Prince,” he said. “We missed you very much. A lot has been happening, and we didn’t know what to do without you.”

A few days after my return, I had a reunion with Loai and my other good Israeli friends. They had only one news item to report, but it was a huge one.

In March, Abdullah Barghouti had been spotted and arrested. Later that year, the Kuwaiti-born bomb maker would be tried in Israeli military court for killing sixty-six people and wounding about five hundred. I knew there were more, but those were all we would be able to prove. Barghouti would be sentenced to sixty-seven life terms—one for each murder victim and an extra one for all those he had wounded. At his sentencing, he would express no remorse, blame Israel, and regret only that he had not had the opportunity to kill more Jews.

“The spate of murderous terror that the accused let loose was one of the most severe in the blood-soaked history of this country,” the judges said.
12
Barghouti flew into a rage, threatening to kill the judges and to teach every Hamas prisoner how to make bombs. As a result, he would serve his terms in solitary confinement. Ibrahim Hamed, my friend Saleh Talahme, and the others, however, still remained at large.

In October, my project at USAID ended, along with my employment. So I threw myself into my work for the Shin Bet, gathering all the information I could.

One morning, a couple of months later, Loai called.

“We found Saleh.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saleh

Winter 2003–Spring 2006

It was easy to know where Saleh and his friends had
been
. The blood they left in their wake was unmistakable. But until now, nobody had been able to catch up to them.

That the Shin Bet had found him broke my heart. Saleh was my friend. He had helped me with my studies. I had shared bread with him and his wife, and I had played with his children. But Saleh was also a terrorist. During his imprisonment by the Palestinian Authority, he had continued his studies through Al-Quds Open University and used what he learned to become such a great bomb maker that he could even make explosives from garbage.

After Saleh’s release by the PA, the Shin Bet watched to see how much time it would take him and his friends to rebuild the Al-Qassam Brigades. It didn’t take long at all. The rebuilt organization wasn’t big, but it was deadly.

Maher Odeh was the brains of the operation; Saleh, the engineer; and Bilal Barghouti, the recruiter of suicide bombers. In fact, the Hamas military wing consisted of only about ten people who operated independently, had their own budgets, and never met together unless it was urgent. Saleh could turn out several explosive belts overnight, and Bilal had a waiting list of candidates for martyrdom.

If I had believed Saleh was innocent, I would have warned him about what was going to happen. But when we finally connected the dots, I realized that he had been behind the Hebrew University bombing and many others. I understood that he needed to be locked away in prison. The only thing I might have done was introduce him to the teachings of Jesus and urge him to follow them as I did. But I knew he was too blinded by rage, zeal, and commitment to have listened, even to an old friend. I could, however, beg the Shin Bet to arrest Saleh and the others rather than kill them. And very reluctantly, they agreed.

Israeli security agents had been monitoring Saleh for more than two months. They watched him leave his apartment to meet in an abandoned house with Hasaneen Rummanah. And they watched him return home, where he remained for a week or so. They saw that his friend Sayyed al-Sheikh Qassem went out more frequently, but he always did what he had to do and came right back. The caution of the fugitives was impressive. No wonder it had taken us so long to find them. Once we picked up their scent, however, it was just a matter of tracking their contacts and contacts of contacts—about forty or fifty in all.

We had a lock on three of the guys on our most-wanted list, but for Ibrahim Hamed and Maher Odeh, we had only clues, nothing concrete. We had to decide whether to wait until the clues led us to them, which was a long shot, or break the spine of the Al-Qassam Brigades in the West Bank by arresting those we had already located. We decided on the latter, figuring we might even get lucky and snag Hamed or Odeh when we hauled in our net.

On the night of December 1, 2003, special forces surrounded more than fifty suspected locations at one time. Every troop available had been called in from all over the West Bank. The Hamas leaders were holed up at the Al-Kiswani building in Ramallah, and they did not respond when they were asked to surrender. Saleh and Sayyed had a lot of weaponry, including a heavy machine gun, the type usually found welded to military vehicles.

The standoff began at 10 p.m. and continued through the night. When the shooting started, I could hear it from my house. Then the unmistakable explosion of a Merkava cannon shattered the morning, and everything was quiet. At 6 a.m., my phone rang.

“Your friend is gone,” Loai told me. “I’m so sorry. You know we would have spared him if we could have. But let me tell you something. If this man—” Loai’s voice broke as he tried to continue— “if this man had grown up in a different environment, he would not have been the same. He would have been just like us. He thought, he really believed, he was doing something good for his people. He was just so wrong.”

Loai knew I had loved Saleh and didn’t want him to die. He knew Saleh was resisting something he believed to be evil and hurtful to his people. And maybe, somehow, Loai had come to care about Saleh too.

“Are they all dead?”

“I haven’t seen the bodies yet. They took them to Ramallah Hospital. We need you to go there and identify them. You’re the only one who knew them all.”

I grabbed a coat and drove over to the hospital, desperately hoping that maybe it wasn’t Saleh, maybe somebody else had been killed. When I arrived, it was chaos. Angry Hamas activists were shouting in the street, and police were everywhere. No one was allowed inside, but because everybody knew who I was, the hospital officials let me in. A medical worker led me down a hallway to a room lined with large coolers. He opened the refrigerator door and slowly pulled out a drawer, releasing the stench of death into the room.

I looked down and saw Saleh’s face. He was almost smiling. But his head was empty. Sayyed’s drawer contained a collection of body parts—legs, head, whatever—in a black plastic bag. Hasaneen Rummanah had been ripped in half. I wasn’t even sure it was him because the face was shaved and Hasaneen had always worn a soft brown beard. Despite media reports to the contrary, Ibrahim Hamed was not with the others. The man who had ordered these men to fight to the death had run away to save himself.

With virtually all of the West Bank Hamas leaders dead or in prison, I became the contact for the leaders in Gaza and Damascus. Somehow, I had become a key contact for the entire Palestinian network of parties, sects, organizations, and cells—including terrorist cells. And no one but a handful of elite Shin Bet insiders knew who or what I really was. It was astonishing to think about.

Because of my new role, it was my sad responsibility to organize the funerals for Saleh and the others. As I did so, I watched every move and listened for every angry or grief-filled whisper that might lead us to Hamed.

“Since the rumors are already flying,” Loai said, “and you are sitting in for the leaders we’ve arrested, let’s put out the word that Ibrahim Hamed cut a deal with the Shin Bet. Most Palestinians have no idea what’s going on. They’ll believe it, and he’ll be forced to defend himself publicly or at least contact the political leaders in Gaza or Damascus. Either way, we may get a lead.”

It was a great idea, but the agency brass nixed it because they were afraid Ibrahim would launch an attack on civilians in retaliation—as if Israel’s killing his friends and arresting half of his organization hadn’t made him angry enough.

So we did it the hard way.

Agents bugged every room in Hamed’s house, hoping his wife or children might let something slip. But it turned out to be the quietest house in Palestine. Once we heard his young son, Ali, ask his mother, “Where is Baba?”

“We don’t talk about that at all,” she scolded.

If his family was that careful, how cautious would Ibrahim be? Months passed with no trace of him.

* * *

In late October 2004, Yasser Arafat became ill during a meeting. His people said he had the flu. But his condition got worse, and he was finally flown out of the West Bank to a hospital outside of Paris. On November 3, he slipped into a coma. Some said he had been poisoned. Others said he had AIDS. He died November 11 at age seventy-five.

A week or so later, my father was released from prison, and no one was more surprised than he was. Loai and other Shin Bet officials met with him the morning of his release.

“Sheikh Hassan,” they said, “it is time for peace. People outside need a person like you. Arafat is gone; a lot of people are being killed. You are a reasonable man. We have to work things out somehow before they get worse.”

“Leave the West Bank, and give us an independent state,” my father replied, “and it will be over.” Of course both sides knew that Hamas would never stop short of taking back all of Israel, though an independent Palestine might bring peace for a decade or two.

Outside Ofer Prison, I waited along with hundreds of reporters from around the world. Carrying his belongings in a black garbage bag, my father squinted in the bright sunlight as two Israeli soldiers led him out the door.

We hugged and kissed, and he asked me to take him directly to Yasser Arafat’s grave before going home. I looked into his eyes and understood that this was a very important step for him. With Arafat gone, Fatah was weakened and the streets were boiling. Fatah leaders were terrified that Hamas would take over, igniting a turf war. The United States, Israel, and the international community were afraid of a civil war. This gesture by the top Hamas leader in the West Bank was a shock to everyone, but no one missed the message: Calm down, everybody. Hamas is not going to take advantage of the death of Arafat. There will be no civil war.