My stubborn refusal to allow the five suicide bombers to be killed had compromised my situation in a big way. Even though everybody believed that the bomber who had been sent back to Jordan was responsible for the arrests, they also knew that Israel doesn’t hesitate to pick up anyone suspected of providing suicide bombers with help. And I had helped them a lot. So why hadn’t I been arrested?
A week after the bomber arrests, the Israeli security team came up with two ideas that could save me from being burned. First, they could arrest me and put me back into prison. But I was afraid that would be the same thing as a death sentence for my father, who would no longer have me to protect him from Israeli assassination attempts.
“The other option is for us to play the game.”
“Game? What game?”
Loai explained that we needed to trigger a high-profile event, something big enough to convince all of Palestine that Israel wanted me arrested or dead. In order to be persuasive, it couldn’t be staged. It had to be real. The Israeli Defense Forces had to really attempt to capture me. And this meant the Shin Bet had to manipulate and deceive the IDF—their own people.
The Shin Bet gave the IDF only a few hours to prepare for this major operation. As the son of Hassan Yousef, I was a very dangerous young man, they warned, because I had a tight relationship to suicide bombers and might be armed with explosives. They said they had good intelligence that I would come to my father’s house that night to visit my mother. I would stay only a short time, and I would be armed with an M16.
What a buildup they gave me. It was indeed an elaborate game.
The IDF was made to believe that I was a very high-profile terrorist who might disappear for good if they screwed up. So they did everything they could to make sure that didn’t happen. Undercover special forces dressed as Arabs, along with highly trained snipers, entered the area in Palestinian vehicles, stopped two minutes from the house, and waited for a signal. Heavy tanks were stationed fifteen minutes away on the territorial border. Helicopter gunships were ready to provide air cover, in case there was trouble with Palestinian street fighters.
Outside my father’s house, I sat in my car waiting for a call from the Shin Bet. When it came, I would have exactly sixty seconds to get away before the special forces surrounded the house. There was no margin for error on my end either.
I felt a stab of regret when I imagined how terrified my mother and little brothers and sisters would be within moments. As usual, they would have to pay the price for everything my father and I did.
I looked at my mother’s beautiful garden. She had gathered flowers from all over, taking cuttings from friends and family whenever she could. She cared for her flowers like they were her children.
“How many flowers do we need?” I sometimes teased her.
“Just a few more” was always the reply.
I recalled the time she pointed to one and said, “This plant is older than you. When you were a child, you broke its pot, but I saved it and it’s still alive.”
Would it still be alive a few minutes from now after arriving troops crushed it under their feet?
My cell phone rang.
Blood rushed to my head. My heart pounded. I started my engine and sped toward the center of town where I had established a new secret location. I was no longer pretending to be a fugitive. Soldiers who would rather kill me than arrest me were searching for me at that very moment. One minute after my departure, ten civilian cars with Palestinian plates slammed on their brakes. Israeli special forces surrounded the house, automatic weapons covering every door and window. The neighborhood was full of children, including my brother Naser. They stopped their soccer game and scattered, terrified.
As soon as the troops were in position, more than twenty tanks thundered in. Now the whole city knew something was going on. I could hear the massive diesel engines from my hideout. Hundreds of armed Palestinian militants rushed to my father’s house and surrounded the IDF. But they couldn’t shoot because children were still running for cover and because my family was inside.
With the arrival of the feda’iyeen, the helicopters were called in.
I suddenly wondered if I had been wrong to spare the suicide bombers. If I had just let the IDF drop a bomb on them, my family and our neighborhood would not be at risk now. If one of my siblings died in this chaos, I would never forgive myself.
To make certain our elaborate production became a global news event, I had tipped off Al-Jazeera that there was going to be an attack on the home of Sheikh Hassan Yousef. They all thought the Israelis had finally gotten my father, and they wanted to broadcast his arrest live. I imagined what their reaction would be when the loudspeakers started to crackle and the soldiers demanded that his oldest son, Mosab, come out with his hands up. As soon as I got to my apartment, I flipped on the TV and watched the drama along with the rest of the Arab world.
The army evacuated my family and questioned them. My mother told them that I had left one minute before they arrived. Of course, they didn’t believe her. They believed the Shin Bet, the ones who had staged the entire production and the only people besides myself who knew that the game had begun. When I didn’t surrender, they threatened to start shooting.
For a tense ten minutes, everyone waited to see whether I would come out and, if I did, whether I would emerge shooting or with my hands in the air. Then time was up. They opened fire, and more than two hundred bullets riddled my second-floor bedroom (and are still in the walls today). There was no more talking. They had obviously decided to kill me.
Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Moments later, a missile whistled through the air and blew up half our house. Soldiers rushed inside. I knew they were searching every room. No corpse and no hiding fugitive.
The IDF was embarrassed and enraged that I had slipped from their grasp. If they caught me now, Loai warned over the phone, they would shoot me on sight. For us, however, the operation was a success. No one had been hurt, and I had advanced to the most-wanted list. The whole city was talking about me. Overnight, I had become a dangerous terrorist.
For the next few months, I had three priorities: stay out of the army’s way, protect my dad, and continue to gather intelligence. In that order.
Chapter Twenty-Two
DEFENSIVE SHIELD
Spring 2002
The escalation in violence was dizzying.
Israelis were shot and stabbed and blown up. Palestinians were assassinated. Round and round it went, faster and faster. The international community tried in vain to pressure Israel.
“End the illegal occupation…. Stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians,” demanded UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in March 2002.[9]
On the same day that we had arrested the four suicide bombers I had protected from assassination, European Union leaders called on both Israel and the Palestinians to rein in the violence. “There is no military solution to this conflict,” they said.[10]
In 2002, Passover fell on March 27. In a dining room on the ground floor of the Park Hotel in Netanya, 250 guests had gathered for the traditional Seder meal.
A twenty-five-year-old Hamas operative named Abdel-Basset Odeh walked past the front security guard, past the registration desk in the lobby, and into the packed hall. Then he reached into his jacket.
9
“Annan Criticizes Israel, Palestinians for Targeting Civilians,” U.N. Wire, March 12, 2002, http://www.unwire.org/unwire/20020312/24582_story.asp (accessed October 23, 2009).
10
European Union, “Declaration of Barcelona on the Middle East,” March 16, 2002, http://europa.eu/bulletin/en/200203/i1055.htm.