There were bushes all around me. After a few moments, several of them started moving. Turns out, some of them were actually the agents who were usually present in our meetings, but now they were carrying heavy machine guns and wearing IDF camouflage uniforms with branches sticking out all over. I could tell they were having fun playing commando—just one more dress-up role in a repertoire that ranged from terrorists and feda’iyeen to old men and the occasional woman.
“How are you doing?” they asked me, as if we had just sat down together in a coffeehouse. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is okay.”
“Have you got anything?”
Sometimes I brought them recording devices or other evidence or intelligence, but I was empty-handed this time.
It started to rain, and we ran up and over a hill to an area where two jeeps waited. Three of the men jumped into the first jeep, and I jumped in the back. The others stayed with the second jeep to secure my return. I felt sorry for the guys we left behind because it was raining pretty hard. But they still seemed to be enjoying themselves.
After meeting with Loai, his boss, and the guards for a few hours, I left the same way I had come—pleased with myself, even though the trek back was long, wet, and cold.
This became our standard way of meeting. It was perfectly choreographed and executed flawlessly every time. I didn’t have to cut the fence again, but I always carried the cutters, just in case.
After my “escape” from the highly visible IDF raid, I continued to keep tabs on my father to make sure he was okay and see if there was anything he needed. Every once in a while, I stopped by the USAID office, but since we had suspended most of our work, what little I needed to do I was able to finish from my computer at home. At night, I hung out with wanted people and gathered intelligence. And late at night, once or twice a month, I infiltrated a top secret military installation to attend a meeting.
In my spare time, I continued to hang out with my Christian friends to talk about the love of Jesus. Actually, it was a lot more than talk. Even though I was still just a follower of the Teacher, I felt as if I was experiencing God’s love and protection every day, and it seemed to be extending to the members of my family as well.
One afternoon, special forces troops were searching the City Inn for fugitives and came up empty, so they decided to take a break at a nearby house. This was common practice. The IDF didn’t need orders or authorization. When things were relatively quiet, their special forces soldiers simply commandeered somebody’s house in order to grab a few hours of rest and maybe get something to eat. Sometimes during heavy fighting, they even broke into local homes and used the occupants as human shields—much like the feda’iyeen often did.
On this particular day, they chose the house in which my father was hiding. The Shin Bet didn’t know this was happening. None of us did. The fact that soldiers picked that particular house on that particular day was something no one could have predicted or prevented. And when they arrived, my father “happened” to be in the basement.
“Could you please not bring the dogs in here?” the woman who lived there asked the soldiers. “I have little children.”
Her husband was terrified that the troops would find Hassan Yousef and arrest them for harboring a fugitive. So he tried to act normal and unafraid. He told his seven-year-old daughter to go and shake hands with the commander. The commander was charmed by the little girl and figured she and her parents were just a regular family who had nothing to do with terrorists. He asked the woman politely if his men could rest for a little while upstairs, and she said that would be fine. About twenty-five Israeli soldiers stayed in that house for more than eight hours, unaware that my father was literally right beneath them.
I could not explain away the sense of supernatural protection and intervention. It was real to me. When Ahmad al-Faransi (who had once asked me for explosives to give to his suicide bombers) called me from the middle of Ramallah and asked if I could pick him up and drive him home, I told him I was in the area and would be there in a few minutes. When I arrived, he climbed into the car, and we started driving.
We had not gone far when al-Faransi’s cell phone rang. Al-Faransi was on Jerusalem’s assassination list, and Arafat’s headquarters was calling to warn him that Israeli helicopters had been following him. I opened the window and heard two Apaches closing in. Though it may seem strange to those who have not sensed God speaking to them in an internal voice, on this day I heard God speak to my heart, instructing me to turn left between two buildings. I later learned that had I continued to go straight, the Israelis would have had a clean shot at my car. I turned the car and instantly heard that divine voice say,
I learned later that intelligence had received a message that al-Faransi had been spotted getting into a dark blue Audi A4. There were many just like it in town. Loai wasn’t in the operations room at the time to check my location, and no one knew to ask whether this Audi might belong to the Green Prince. Few members of the Shin Bet even knew of my existence.
Somehow, I seemed to always benefit from divine protection. I wasn’t even a Christian yet, and al-Faransi certainly didn’t know the Lord. My Christian friends were praying for me every day, however. And God, Jesus said in Matthew 5:45, “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” This was certainly a far cry from the cruel and vengeful god of the Qur’an.
Chapter Twenty-Four
PROTECTIVE CUSTODY
Fall 2002—Spring 2003
I was exhausted. I was tired of playing so many dangerous roles at once, tired of having to change my personality and appearance to fit the current company I was keeping. When I was with my father and other Hamas leaders, I had to play the part of a dedicated member of Hamas. When I was with the Shin Bet, I had to play the part of an Israeli collaborator. When I was at home, I often played the part of father and protector of my siblings, and when I was at work, I had to play the part of a regular working guy. I was in my last semester of college, and I had exams to study for. But I couldn’t concentrate.
It was the end of September 2002, and I decided that it was time for act 2 of the play that had opened with the Shin Bet’s phony attempt to arrest me.
“I can’t keep up like this,” I told Loai. “What will it take? A few months in prison? We go through the motions of interrogation. You release me. Then I can go back and finish school. I can go back to my job at USAID and live a normal life.”
“What about your father?”
“I’m not going to leave him behind to be assassinated. Go ahead and arrest him too.”
“If that’s what you want. The government will certainly be happy that we finally caught Hassan Yousef.”
I told my mother where my father was hiding, and I let her visit him. Five minutes after she arrived at the safe house, special forces poured into the area. Soldiers ran through the neighborhood, shouting at all the civilians to get inside.
One of those “civilians,” smoking a narghile (Turkish water pipe) in front of his house, was none other than master bomb maker Abdullah Barghouti, who had no idea that he had been living across the street from Hassan Yousef. And the poor IDF soldier who told him to get inside had no idea that he had been shouting at Israel’s most wanted mass murderer.
Everybody was clueless. My father had no idea that his son had given him up in order to protect him from being assassinated. And the IDF had no idea that the Shin Bet had known the whereabouts of Hassan Yousef all along and that some of their soldiers had even eaten lunch and enjoyed a nap in the house where he was hiding.
As usual, my father surrendered peacefully. And he and the other Hamas leaders assumed the Shin Bet had followed my mother to his hideout. Naturally, my mother was sad, but she was also relieved that her husband was
