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.
The fact was, however, that after a decade of arrests, imprisonments, and assassinations, the Shin Bet still had no clue who was actually in charge of Hamas. None of us did. I had helped them arrest known activists, men heavily involved in the resistance movement, all the while hoping they were the ones. We put people under administrative detention for years, sometimes based on suspicion alone. But Hamas never seemed to notice their absence.
So who was really in charge?
The fact that it wasn’t my father came as a big surprise to everyone—even me. We bugged his office and car, monitored every move he made. And there was absolutely no doubt that he was not pulling the strings.
Hamas had always been something of a ghost. It had no central or branch offices, no place where people could drop by to talk to movement representatives. A lot of Palestinians came to my dad’s office, shared their problems, and asked for help, especially the families of prisoners and martyrs who lost their husbands and fathers during the intifadas. But even Sheikh Hassan Yousef was in the dark. Everybody thought he had all the answers, but he was no different than the rest of us: all he had were questions.
Once he told me he was thinking of closing his office.
“Why? Where will you meet with the media?” I asked.
“I don’t care. People are coming from everywhere, hoping I can help. But there is no way I can provide for everyone who needs help; it’s simply too much.”
“Why doesn’t Hamas help them? These are the families of the movement members. Hamas has lots of money.”
“Yes, but the organization doesn’t give it to me.”
