by Jack Leman
The Jerusalem Gambit
Jack Leman
Copyright © 2021 Jack Leman
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1 - Tuesday
Chapter 2 - Wednesday
Chapter 3 - Thursday
Chapter 4 - Friday
Chapter 5 - Saturday
Chapter 6 - Sunday
Epilogue
Chapter 1 - Tuesday
1-Tuesday 4:00 pm
Near Damascus
Ghassan Hakimi walked in circles while pulling on his cigarette. He had been in this dirty warehouse for two boring days and he longed to get out and breathe some fresh air. He checked his breast pocket to make sure he had another pack of cigarettes and adjusted the only rank marking he wore on his camouflaged uniform that identified him as a Major. Like all his men, he had on his shoulders the discreet blue patch of the 83rd Brigade of the Syrian Air Defense Force. He preferred these discreet rank markings to the heavy epaulettes his colleagues in Damascus fancied. That’s why he had chosen a field command rather than an office assignment close to the palace, where you had to dress up every day for the eventuality you could meet the Chief of Staff, or the President.
Ghassan was born 42 years ago in Ras al-Zayn, a tiny mountain village 30km southwest of Damascus, where he had spent all his childhood and teenage years before being sent to a boarding school in Damascus. His family lived there for generations, tending their olive trees. Most of the population descended from four families who had started an agricultural hamlet at the time of the Ottoman Empire. Since then, inter-family marriages turned the village into a single, extensive family. Everybody knew everybody. No family secrets existed, and if there were some, they had become the village’s secrets. In such a small community, the only chance to start a new family was marrying a cousin or a niece; Ghassan had been no exception. His parents followed the local tradition and married him to Rashida, the daughter of a distant uncle who lived a few houses away from him.
The distance to the next village was four kilometers, but the people living there did not rate high in the minds of the population of Ras al-Zayn, and probably the opposite was also true. Therefore, giving a bride to another village, or taking a groom from another village, was frowned upon. Normally the bride would live with the family of the groom. She had nothing to complain; her adoptive family always made sure they treated her fairly and intervened if anything that could affect their honor happened. Honor was everything, and the basic rules of cohabitation were devised around the notion of honor. It was a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, where, despite the existence of a basic law, the authorities also recognized the community laws. They called upon the village Elders to solve minor disputes, like deciding if an olive tree remained within the property of one or other villager; if the Elders failed to solve the problem, then the plaintiff could take it to the Qadi of the district, who lived at the borough some twenty kilometers away. He acted like a modern day judge; but the Elders were loathed to send the cases to the Qadi, and the rare ones that went still made the conversation in the coffee shop.
In the villages, the local mosque building served also as the school. In an effort to establish a secular education system, the father of the actual President started a program to provide a separate school building for each village. He replaced the traditional teachers by teachers who went through secular education themselves.
Ghassan had gone to this secular school and was singled out by his teachers as an intelligent boy who promised a bright future and was sent to a boarding school in Damascus. He was the first boy to leave the village with a full scholarship and continued his studies in the Military High School of Damascus and then specialized in the Air Force. His ambition was to become a fighter pilot, but after graduating from the Syrian Air Force Academy with honors, the Syrian Intelligence Directorate (the Mukhabarat) which answered directly to the President of Syria drafted him without giving him much choice. After the death of Hafez al-Assad, the Presidency passed to his younger son Bashar al-Assad, who, at the time, was studying medicine in London. The elder son Bassel had been prepared and anointed to take over his father’s duties, but his death in a car accident brought this project to an abrupt end. As the military adjusted to the new presidency, Ghassan was given the opportunity to join a team that developed an advanced missile system. The ambitious aim of this team was to provide Syria with a protective umbrella from the attacks of the neighboring air forces. Since the Israeli Air Force (IAI) destroyed the nuclear reactor in Deir ez-Zor on the 6th of September 2007, their priority had been to prevent the IAI from roaming the Syrian skies almost unchallenged. With the help of the Russians, his team had built a deterrent air defense system, manning fixed and mobile SAM (Surface-to-Air missile) units. Later on, he was recruited to take part in a secret missile program with the Iranians. During his two years in Iran, he took part in live tests against the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or DAESH, as it is known in the Arabic countries. These had been valuable experiences, and it was the reason he was given this specific command he was so proud of.
Lately, he had been preoccupied with his wife, Rashida, and his three children. They lived in the family house with his parents, and he hoped they were all right. He missed them. He hadn’t seen them for the past three years; he wasn’t even sure if his youngest son, Majid, who was now almost four years old, would remember him. He carried in his breast pocket a family picture, taken when his son was six months old, and looked at it often, trying to visualize how he had grown from a baby into a little boy. The man holding proudly the baby in his arms looked lean and young in the picture. Now his hair had grown gray at the sides, the sign of the stressful life he endured since they promoted him to major. Although mustaches were common among his men, he wore his with pride. His mustache was still thick and black, and he took care of it daily, making sure there was no gray hair in it. Lately, his shirt started getting tight on the belly; he got little exercise nowadays. In the beginning of his posting he had led his man to do some calisthenics in the mornings, but that ambition soon waned, and the only exercise he got was the few paces he made in their hiding place.
The heavy rain had finally stopped. He looked around at his team. They had taken out their military blouses and were down to their camouflaged T-shirts. In the oppressive Syrian summer the high ceilings of the warehouse should have facilitated the air circulation and brought some breeze, but today the stagnant air had drenched the men in their sweat. A group of soldiers were watching two of their mates playing backgammon, enjoying the game and the bantering. Some onlookers teased noisily the players on the wisdom of their move, while others took bets on the players. Even though the army prohibited gambling, he closed his eyes on this betting because he could sense that his men really enjoyed that. Sometimes his men asked to take part in a tournament, and they were gracious enough to drop the betting. Some of his men were catching a much-deserved sleep. The engineer of the group, Sergeant Fuad, was as usual in his corner, reading a book. Some were sitting on folding picnic chairs they had plundered from a furniture shop. For most of them, it was the most prized piece of furniture.
Ghassan looked at the truck parked in the warehouse and at his team with affection. Detachment 413, as identified in the Air Force, was his baby.
A canopy covered the trailer to make it look like a regular delivery truck. It was painted with large red “Seles Fruit Juices” markings on each side. On the right side of the canopy, below the brand, they had painted stacks of soft drink crates, creating an optical illusion that looked like the canopy was open and that the truck was delivering soft-drinks.
When they were driving in the streets of Damascus, they were easily mistaken for a regular delivery van.
The cabin of the truck and the top of the canopy were painted in bright red. The only thing that distinguish it from a real Seles delivery truck was the hidden set of retractable wheels, just behind the front wheels. They were concealed from view by a canvas skirt. The Iranians were experts in deception, and the truck made no exception.
A white van especially designed to carry six Special Forces soldiers escorted the truck. The soldiers assured the close security of the squad and the precious truck. They were also responsible for securing the perimeter where they were stationed. The van was fitted with a little workbench and carried some basic spare parts needed for the maintenance and operation of the main truck. The most urgent and obvious spare parts were provided, but more specific parts had to be ordered from the Military Supply Office.
Ghassan stepped on his cigarette butt with his boot and looked at his watch for the tenth time in the last hour. At least two hours to wait. He lit another cigarette. He fiddled eagerly with his radio to make sure it was functioning properly, but there was only the swash of the radio silence. His instructions had been clear: in no circumstance was he allowed to go on air. The multitude of eavesdropping equipment flying overhead could detect and record his transmission, and then trace it back to the warehouse they were hiding in. He even took special attention not to press the transmit button by mistake. He still had in mind his predecessor, who had made the mistake and was demoted for putting in danger the entire operation. He never heard of him again.
He was waiting for the coded signal that would give him their next destination, most likely another filthy warehouse. They spent their days and nights hiding from the inquiring eyes of the Israeli satellites and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that were seeing and hearing every detail of what was happening 20,000 feet below their silent flight. Even the sky of Damascus was dangerous.
Fuad, the engineer, approached him with a worried look on his face.
“I think the generator will fail us soon.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“It must be the alternator. We don’t have a spare. We use now the power supply of the hangar, but we will be out of service if there is a power cut.”
That was a major problem. Ghassan didn’t know if they could find this specific alternator at local dealers, but it was better to try them first than to ask the Military Supply Office.
These generators were produced in Iran under South Korean license. Since power cuts had become a permanent part of the lives of Syrians, the Iranian generators had invaded the market and they were now an indispensable element of their homes. There was an extensive network of repair shops, which made it easier to get spare parts from the local dealers than the Military Procurement Bureau, where the excessive red tape was overwhelming.
“We’ll see when we move to the next hangar. We will try to find a local dealer and hope he gets us an alternator. In the meantime, use the power supply of the hangar.” Ghassan said hopefully.
2- Tuesday 6:00 pm
Ras al-Zayn
30km west of Damascus
Ras al-Zayn (the village where Ghassan Hakimi was born) rested on the slopes of the mountains, on the west side of Damascus, near the Lebanese border. The highway linking Beirut to Damascus passed just north of the village, curved south downhill, allowing the village a direct view on the busy traffic. They got little noise from the traffic because after crossing into Syria, most of the drivers shifted their gears into neutral and let their vehicles race downhill. After the uphill drive from Lebanon, the strained engines needed to cool down and the gear-free ride saved precious fuel.
At the center of the village sat a tiny dusty place which the inhabitants liked to call the square where a weekly market was held. The mosque, the coffee shop, and the school; the three most important buildings of the village boarded the square. Thick and knotty olive trees surrounded the village and formed an idyllic landscape.
Rashida Hakimi looked with fondness at her son chasing the chickens in the courtyard. She and her three children had been living with her in-laws for four years now. She felt happy here because they treated her as if she was their own daughter. High whitewash walls surrounded the two floor stone house. Rashida and her children lived on the second floor. She gave up her room on the first floor, because Sahad, her father-in-law, was having difficulties climbing up the steep staircase to the second floor. The kitchen on the first floor was small, but she took pleasure to cook with her mother-in-law. When the delicious scents of the lamb in the oven invaded the courtyard, the kids naturally moved their playing grounds to the entrance of the kitchen, hoping they would get a piece of the lamb to test if it was well done. On the days they were cooking bread, the children peered into the windows of the kitchen to get a bit of the bread fresh out of the oven. In the courtyard, a pergola provided some shade from the scorching sun of the Syrian summer. While her father-in-law spent time in the coffee shop playing backgammon, she and Janan, her mother-in-law, sat there to chat while watching the children play.
Behind the house, there was a small warehouse used for storing olive oil in large blue plastic drums. The Hakimi family owned close to 200 olive trees at the southern edge of the village. The maintenance of the trees and the harvest of the olives was a tough job, and it was getting more difficult with every passing year. After the younger men of the village went to war, the job of working in the fields and tending to the trees was left to the older men, women, and children.
Despite the civil war in Syria, violence had spared Rashida’s village.
Three years ago, on a scorching summer day, a group of Syrian Hezbollah fighters arrived in their village, and demanded the men gather to listen to the fighters.
The Hezbollah, literally the Party of God, was originally a Lebanese militia group, formed by Shia Muslims and established with the efforts of the Iranians after the Sabra and Shatila massacre by a militia allied with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. The idea was to bring together the different Shia factions against the ruling Sunni minority in Lebanon and against their common enemy, Israel. They were armed, trained and financed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Command (IRGC) of Iran. They spearheaded the Iranian expansion in the Middle East and acted as the Iranian’s proxy in their conflict with Israel. The new political party had taken part in the Lebanese elections and, against all odds, won enough seats to allow them to enter the Lebanese government, upsetting the traditional sectarian power sharing of Lebanon established since the time of the French occupation. With the help of the Iranians, Hezbollah soon became the largest armed force in Lebanon, even larger and more effective than the Lebanese army. They waged a guerilla campaign in south Lebanon, which compelled the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon. Their disciplined troops turned soon into a regular army and they became a state within the state in Lebanon. When the civil war erupted in Syria, Hezbollah and Iran got involved on the side of the Assad regime and fought against the Sunni Islamic groups that invaded Syria.
Once the men of the village were assembled in the coffee shop, the Hezbollah asked the Elders to surrender peacefully to the Shia fighters. Despite being Sunnis, the Elders had no real choice, and they bowed to the strongest. Since then, the Hezbollah had assigned a few armed fighters to the village, and they avoided interfering in the daily lives of the residents.
The Hezbollah fighters maintained the control of the village, even in hard times, despite the frictions between them and the Syrians because of the interference of Israel in their internal affairs. Whenever Israel bombed a Hezbollah ammunition dump and some Syrian soldiers or civilians died along with some militiamen or Iranians, the government admonished them for having hidden their existence and held them responsible for the Israeli attacks. As a retribution, they imposed restrictions of movement or ordered them to retreat from some strategic points; another bonus to the Israelis.
Life had been peaceful until the day the villagers woke up and realized the Hezbollah troops had vanished. The Elders met
in the coffee shop and were bewildered to recognize that they were on their own.
That night, some armed fighters had, rather rudely, pulled out of bed all the men of the village and escorted them to the coffee shop.
Standing in front of the scared and helpless old men were twelve soldiers with long beards and strange camouflage uniforms. They all carried AK-47 machine guns and boasted spare magazines strapped in harnesses on their chest.
Sahad Hakimi, Ghassan’s father, was terrorized deep inside, but as the Mukhtar of the village he tried to keep his composure. He had been Mukhtar for the past twelve years and gone through four elections, for which he had been the only candidate. It pained him that his son was not living in the village anymore, and he would not continue this job after he passed away.
He looked at the shoulder patch of the militiamen. They showed a red map of historical Palestine, which included today’s Israel. He concluded they were part of the Palestinians refusing the existence of Israel. He had heard about some Palestinian groups that volunteered to fight in Syria, but he didn’t recognize the shoulder patch.
“Listen well now!” said the one who appeared to be their leader in a menacing tone.
“My name is Abu Ahmad; we are Palestinians and we belong to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). We are fighting the Zionist entity and have no grudge with the people of Syria. Our leadership has deployed us to your village after the PIJ in Damascus reached an agreement with Hezbollah. God willing, we shall live with you for some time. You and your families will be unharmed as long as you follow two basic rules: leaving the village without our authorization is forbidden, and you must surrender your cell phones to us. My friends will visit your houses and will remove the landline phones. From now on, anyone who gets caught talking on the phone will be shot on the spot.”
Sahad realized that in the past they had been very lucky with the Hezbollah. They did not impose their ways of life or beliefs on the villagers. They let them live by their own rules, as they had been living for centuries.
