Chapter Nineteen
SHOES
2001
The Second Intifada seemed to roll on and on without even pausing to catch its breath. On March 28, 2001, a suicide bomber killed two teenagers at a gas station. On April 22, a bomber killed one person and himself and wounded about fifty at a bus stop. On May 18, five civilians were killed and more than one hundred wounded by a suicide bomber outside a shopping mall in Netanya.
And then on June 1, at 11:26 p.m., a group of teenagers were standing in line, talking and laughing and horsing around, eager to enter a popular Tel Aviv disco known as the Dolphi. Most of the kids were from the former Soviet Union, their parents recent émigrés. Saeed Hotari stood in line, too, but he was Palestinian and a little older. He was wrapped in explosives and metal fragments.
The newspapers didn’t call the Dolphinarium attack a suicide bombing. They called it a massacre. Scores of kids were ripped apart by ball bearings and the sheer force of the blast. Casualties were high: 21 died; 132 were wounded.
No suicide bomber had ever killed so many people in a single attack. Hotari’s neighbors in the West Bank congratulated his father. “I hope that my other three sons will do the same,” Mr. Hotari told an interviewer. “I would like all members of my family, all the relatives, to die for my nation and my homeland.”[7]
Israel was more determined than ever to cut off the head of the snake. It should have learned by then, however, that if imprisoning faction leaders did nothing to stop the bloodshed, assassinating them was unlikely to work either.
Jamal Mansour was a journalist, and like my father, was one of the seven founders of Hamas. He was one of my father’s closest friends. They had been exiled together in south Lebanon. They talked and laughed on the phone nearly every day. He was also the chief advocate of suicide bombings. In a January interview with Newsweek, he defended the killing of unarmed civilians and praised the bombers.
On Tuesday, July 31, after a tip from a collaborator, a pair of Apache helicopter gunships approached Mansour’s media offices in Nablus. They fired three laser-guided missiles through the window of his second-floor office. Mansour, Hamas leader Jamal Salim, and six other Palestinians were incinerated by the blasts. Two of the victims were children, aged eight and ten, who had been waiting to see the doctor on the floor below. Both were crushed beneath the rubble.
This seemed crazy. I called Loai.
“What in the world is going on? Are you sure those guys were involved in suicide bombings? I know they supported the attacks, but they were in the political wing of Hamas with my father, not the military wing.”
“Yes. We have intelligence that Mansour and Salim were directly involved in the Dolphinarium massacre. They have blood on their hands. We had to do this.”
What could I do? Argue with him? Tell him he didn’t have the right information? It suddenly dawned on me that the Israeli government must also be determined to assassinate my father. Even if he hadn’t organized the suicide bombings, he was still guilty by association. Besides, he had information that could have saved lives, and he withheld it. He had influence, but he didn’t use it. He could have tried to stop the killing, but he didn’t. He supported the movement and encouraged its members to continue their opposition until the Israelis were forced to withdraw. In the eyes of the Israeli government, he, too, was a terrorist.
With all my Bible reading, I was now comparing my father’s actions with the teachings of Jesus, not those found in the Qur’an. He was looking less and less like a hero to me, and it broke my heart. I wanted to tell him what I was learning, but I knew he would not listen. And if those in Jerusalem had their way, my father would never get the opportunity to see how Islam had led him down the wrong path.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that my father would be safe at least for a while because of my connection with the Shin Bet. They wanted him alive as much as I did—for very different reasons, of course. He was their main source of inside information regarding Hamas activities. Of course, I couldn’t explain that to him, and even the Shin Bet’s protection could end up being dangerous to him. After all, it would seem pretty suspicious if all the other Hamas leaders were forced into hiding while my father was allowed to walk freely down the street. I needed to at least go through the motions of protecting him. I immediately went to his office and pointed out that what had just happened to Mansour could just as easily have happened to him.
“Get rid of everybody. Get rid of your bodyguards. Close the office. Don’t come here again.”
His response was as I expected.
“I’ll be okay, Mosab. We’ll put steel over the windows.”
“Are you crazy? Get out of here now! Their missiles go through tanks and buildings, and you think you’re going to be protected by a sheet of metal? If you could seal the windows, they would come through the ceiling. Come on; let’s go!”
I couldn’t really blame him for resisting. He was a religious leader and a politician, not a soldier. He had no clue about the army or about assassinations. He didn’t know all that I knew. He finally agreed to leave with me, though I knew he wasn’t happy about it.
But I was not the only one who came to the conclusion that Mansour’s old friend, Hassan Yousef, would logically be the next target. When we walked down the street, it seemed that everyone around us looked worried. They quickened their pace and glanced anxiously at the sky as they tried to move away from us as quickly as possible. I knew that, like me, they were listening closely for the chug of incoming helicopters. Nobody wanted to end up as collateral damage.
I drove my father to the City Inn Hotel and told him to stay there.
“Okay, this guy here at the desk is going to change your room every five hours. Just listen to him. Don’t bring anybody to your room. Don’t call anyone but me, and don’t leave this place. Here’s a safe phone.”
As soon as I left, I told the Shin Bet where he was.
“Okay, good. Keep him there, out of trouble.”
To do that, I had to know where he was every moment. I had to know every breath he took. I got rid of all his bodyguards. I couldn’t trust them. I needed my father to rely on me totally. If he didn’t, he would almost certainly make a mistake that would cost him his life. I became his aide, bodyguard, and gatekeeper. I arranged for all of his needs. I kept an eye on everything that happened anywhere near the hotel. I was his contact with the outside world, and I was the outside world’s contact with him. This new role carried the added benefit of keeping me entirely free from suspicion of being a spy.
I started acting the part of a Hamas leader. I carried an M16, which identified me as a man with means, connections, and authority. In those days, such weapons were in big demand and short supply (my assault rifle went for ten thousand dollars). And I traded heavily on my relationship to Sheikh Hassan Yousef.
Hamas military guys began to hang around me just to show off. And because they thought I knew all the secrets of the organization, they felt comfortable sharing their problems and frustrations with me, believing I could help them with their issues.
I listened carefully. They had no idea they were giving me little bits of information that I was piecing together to create much bigger pictures. These snapshots led to more Shin Bet operations than I could describe to you in a single book. What I will tell you is that many innocent lives were saved as a result of those conversations. There were many fewer grieving widows and shattered orphans at gravesides because of the suicide bombings we were able to prevent.
At the same time, I gained trust and respect within the military wing and became the go-to Hamas guy for other Palestinian factions as well. I was the person they expected to provide them with explosives and to coordinate operations with Hamas.
7
Leonard Cole, Terror: How Israel Has Coped and What America Can Learn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 8.