The Jerusalem Gambit

by Jack Leman

  This new lot belonged to the PIJ, possibly from a group expelled from Gaza and sent to the Lebanese mountains in 2009, after the Israeli Cast Lead operation. That year, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas who ruled in Gaza. Egypt twisted the arm of Hamas to get rid of their troublemakers by either delivering them to Israel or exile them to the Lebanese mountains. Hamas had no choice, and despite Israel’s reticence, they had agreed to the exile. In Lebanon they were put under the surveillance of Hezbollah. The only group who was satisfied with this arrangement was Hezbollah because they had received a sizeable sum for welcoming the exiled fighters.

  The PIJ was a Sunni Islamist group based in Damascus. They focused on derailing any deals the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah tried to reach with Israel. They had vowed to eliminate the State of Israel and to create in occupied Palestine, a single Palestinian state, ruled according to Islamic Law. They were staunch opponents of the Oslo Accords that recognized Israel’s right to exist. Like Hezbollah, the Iranian al-Quds organization financed and armed them. Al-Quds is the Arabic name given to Jerusalem.

  They got along with the Syrian Regime because they did not impede Assad’s troops in their fight with their fellow Sunnis in northern Syria. The other reason Assad tolerated them was probably because they somehow kept the Israelis busy.

  There was an awkward silence in the room; they all looked at each other, and then to Abu Ahmad. The door opened, and a fighter entered and whispered something to the ear of Abu Ahmad. Abu Ahmad nodded and asked:

  “Which one of you is Mukhtar Sahad Hakimi?”

  Sahad was stunned and looked at the chief with an open mouth. He saw the eyes of the villagers turning questioningly on him. Fear rapidly invaded his mind. How did they know his name? Was he the reason for their presence in the village? Had they been to his house? Had he done something to offend some authority? Questions fused in his mind.

  He slowly raised his hand and said, “Me,” in a shaky voice.

  Abu Ahmad looked up and down at him and somehow respectfully said.

  “Get up and come with me, father.”

  Aware of the worried looks of his friends, Sahad unsteadily rose and walked towards the door. Two armed fighters flanked him and supported him as if he would fall. He thought it was his last moments before being shot, and he thought it was really cheap to die for some unknown reason.

  Outside, the air was crisp and stars shone in the sky, but that did not give him any solace. He still couldn’t grasp why he had been singled out.

  When they entered his home, his fears became a reality. His wife, Rashida, and her children were sitting on the floor in a corner of the room. A soldier waited upon them with his machine gun pointing to his grandson.

  He found the courage to speak out,

  “What do you want from me? Please let them go… don’t harm them… they have done nothing against the Palestinians…”

  “Sit down, father,” said Abu Ahmed, pointing to the opposite corner of the room.

  “Where is your cell phone?”

  He pulled from his belt the phone Ghassan had given him and extended it to the PIJ guy with a shaky hand.

  Abu Ahmad went towards the women and pulled up Majid from the arms of his mother and pushed him towards Sahad. He made Majid sit facing him. Rashida covered her face with her white hands. The girls started whimpering and clutched their mother.

  “Please…”

  “Don’t worry,” said Abu Ahmad in a relaxed voice. “If you cooperate with us, you will all be safe.”

  He looked at the women sitting in the corner and turned to Sahad “Now I want you to take the phone and call your son Ghassan. You tell him that the PIJ has taken over the village from Hezbollah, then you pass the phone to me. Understood?”

  So, was it all about his son? What kind of trouble did he run into this time? Thought Sahad, and took the phone.

  Ghassan was quick to answer the call and said,

  “Father! Is everyone all right?”

  “Yes, my son, we, I guess we are all fine. The PIJ took over the village from the Hezbollah. Their leader wants to speak to you.”

  Abu Ahmad took the phone and walked out of the room, leaving the family with the soldiers.

  3- Tuesday 11:30 pm

  Tira

  85km North of Jerusalem

  Nashwa Shamoon was driving her Honda on the Yitzhak Rabin Highway. She had left Jerusalem an hour ago and drove peacefully on the right lane while gazing through her window. She liked the drive because it provided her with moments of freedom. Freedom from the hassle of her daily life, and gave her time to think about her issues. The problem that had been nagging her lately was how did she end up in a relationship while being a married mother and how to find a solution to solve it.

  She was 39 years old and a mother of a 21-year-old daughter. She grew up and went to school in an all-Arab village in Israel. Israel had captured the lands of Tayibe during the 1948 war but had failed to take the village itself. With the 1949 ceasefire, Jordan ceded the village to Israel. With time, the village grew to a large town and now over 40,000 Israeli-Arabs live there, making it the largest Israeli-Arab city in Israel. Nashwa’s father was the head of one of the twenty families who traditionally ruled the town during the Ottoman period.

  The education system was better in Tayibe than in Jordan. Modern concepts like human rights, women’s rights, acceptance of the other, were part of her upbringing and inevitably brought conflicts with her parents and her extended family.

  Her parents had been traumatized by the annexation of their village to Israel and still liked to talk about the good old days when the family and the village were in Jordan, and there was no interference of another culture in their daily lives. They remained attached to their traditional rules that regulated the family life. As a result, her parents forced her into a marriage when she was 16. She didn’t have the courage to refuse or resist and unwillingly complied with her family’s wishes. Her husband Djamal had just turned 17. The marriage had been arranged between the two families when she was just 12 years old. Although the marriage of minors was unlawful, the traditions were more important than the laws for the Arabs living in Israel.

  Married life proved too hard for the young wife. She missed her youth, her friends. She lived in her in-law’s house and found it impossible to create a family of her own. Under the same circumstances some of her friends managed it quite well, gave birth to many children, moved to a house of their own, and while the husband worked in some menial job, the wife tended to the children and the comfort of her husband. Nashwa refused to be confined to such a life; she wanted to continue her studies and despite the objections of both her families finished high school. When she was 18, she fell pregnant and gave birth to a girl. Her husband had a regular job in an advertisement company and with his income they moved to a small apartment in Tira. It was one of those apartments that the State of Israel built and leased to low-income families. When her daughter reached the age of six months, Nashwa applied for distance education to the Open University of Israel in Ra’anana to study political science. That’s when she decided to do something useful to improve the rights of women in the Arab community. Her university thesis would be on gender equality issues.

  When her final thesis was accepted with honors and she finished the university, she faced the resentment of her husband for having a better education than his. After her graduation they quietly acknowledged that their marriage was over but that they would not divorce for the sake of their daughter. Living away from the families in Tira made it easier for them to have a discreet life of their own without being bothered by family honor and gossip.

  Last year in a modest wedding, her daughter had married a young and well educated Arab boy from Tira. It was a moment of pride for Nashwa because, unlike herself, her daughter had married on her own free will.

  Leaving Jerusalem behind, Nashwa drove north on the Yitzhak Rabin Highway towards Tira, just a few kilometers south of Tay
ibe.

  As it did every time when she approached her new home, as she liked to think it, her heart rate sped up, and she nervously checked the rearview mirror as she took the exit to Tira. Once on the outskirts of Tira, in a relatively posh part of the town, she came to a villa enclosed by a high wall. She took the fob placed under the sun visor and opened the electric gate of the garage, parked her car next to the big Mercedes. After a last look in the mirror where she checked her make-up and hair, she got out of her car. She was petite and fashionable, with short black hair and fair skin. Nowadays she dressed like any other Israeli woman, rather than the more conservative fashion preferred by her family. She watched the door of the garage close, checked her old Honda for any new bumps or scratches, and walked to the door connecting the garage to the house when it suddenly opened. Ridwan had heard her coming. He was standing by the door, staring at her. He took her breath out. She rushed into his arms and kissed him hungrily.

  “Come,” he whispered, and they moved to the living room. The luxury and good taste of the interior contrasted with the discretion of its exterior. An Italian interior designer hired by Ridwan had decorated the house; the smooth, white Italian leather furniture was low to the ground, chosen as much for comfort as its clean lines and harmony with the bright beige walls. Trendy European furniture and some modern art completed the smart looks of the living room and of the adjoining glistening blue water indoor swimming pool.

  Many villas around Ridwan’s had pools, but in a very Middle Eastern way, their owners liked it to be visible to enhance their social status.

  Ridwan Maaloof was a tall man, of dark complexion, with a thick mustache, short curly hair and deep black eyes. His family was originally from a village near Gaza; in 1948 they took refuge in Majdal, now called Ashkelon. In 1950 they had to move again, and the Israelis relocated them in Ajami, a village near Jaffa. His father applied for Israeli nationality, and the family was very surprised when their wish was granted. So, Ridwan grew up in his middle-class Arabic family, went to a mixed high school in Jaffa where he was impregnated by a different culture than his. His parents would have liked him to study at the university, but he had discovered very early his talent as a tradesman, and at the end of high school, he created with a friend a business trading second-hand cars. When he made some money, he wanted to get away from his oppressing family and moved north, where real estate was more affordable than in Tel Aviv. Now he was his own boss, owned a garage, but still every time he talked to his mother, he had to endure her remarks about him not being married with children yet.

  He was a luxury car dealer. He bought second hand Mercedes cars and vans. He did the necessary refurbishing and painting in his workshop in Tira and sold the cars for a nice profit to the rich families in Gaza. He understood very early that if he wanted to succeed in business dealings with rich people he needed to look like a rich car dealer, neatly dressed with good manners and a faked disdain for money. Nowadays, his physical appearance was the stereotype of a Middle Eastern successful fashion model.

  The Israeli Ministry of Interior provided him with a license, allowing him to have commercial dealings within Gaza. To get free access to the Gaza Strip, his license had to be validated by Hamas, which they did after he paid a hefty baksheesh “to support their struggle.” Since it was more difficult to get the mandatory authorizations, there were fewer players in Gaza making it more profitable than the West Bank. Each time Ridwan went in and out of Gaza, he felt the stress of the inquisition on both sides of the border, but he found the reward for so much hustle was worth the trouble. Lately, he targeted the rich Gazan traders. Each rich trader brought him more prospective customers from their extended family. But dealing with the rich and powerful had also its downsides. Some people with whom he would never wish to be associated could solicit his services. He had met a few times with some leaders and commanders who lived in hiding from the Israeli authorities, sometimes even from Hamas.

  Nashwa had met Ridwan in Tayibe in 2015, at a fund-raising dinner held by her non-profit organization which fought for equal gender rights. He had attracted her attention by donating a generous sum of money to her campaign. A few weeks later, he spontaneously made another donation. Surprised by his generosity, Nashwa visited him in his office the next day. The visit had surprised him because married Arab women normally did not visit single men alone.

  While chatting, she told him they had offered her to join the Balad party, which fought for equal gender rights. She already did that for her NGO. Ridwan encouraged her to go ahead, and volunteered to introduce her to his friends in the party.

  Soon, with his support, she joined the Electoral Committee of the party and put her pleasant looks and her ease to speak to their usage. In the elections of 2015 she had been a candidate for the party, but her party’s electoral list failed to get enough votes.

  One day in January 2019, Ridwan had suggested to his friends in the Israeli-Arab Balad party to include Nashwa again in the electoral list as a candidate for the parliamentary elections due in April. He had offered to be her main sponsor. That evening, after office hours, Nashwa came by his workshop to thank him for his generous gesture.

  One thing led to the other, and they began an intense relationship.

  The elections of April 2019 had been indecisive. They were repeated in September 2019, but failed again to provide a coalition to form a majority government.

  After participating in two elections, the Balad party found it impossible to finance a third election campaign. In the elections of March 2020, Ridwan proved to be a solid pillar of the community and fervently volunteered to be the main sponsor, providing that the Party includes Nashwa on their list. He also pushed the direction of the party to accept a compromise to form a coalition with the other Israeli-Arab parties. The negotiations proved to be a success and the Joint List coalition was born. Nashwa was now the fifth candidate on the list and had big hopes of entering the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.

  Their relation had changed. They had been lovers already for one year. It was a passionate relationship, and Ridwan did his most to accommodate her irregular schedule because of her election campaign.

  In the large bed she shared with Ridwan, Nashwa looked happily at him, sleeping peacefully by her side. But she felt pangs of guilt.

  In total contradiction with her social customs and her conservative upbringing, she could not hold herself from falling deeply in love with Ridwan. In last week’s elections, the fourth in two years, her party succeeded to get enough votes and bargained their way into the new coalition government. Now that she was due to become a member of the Knesset, she wondered how she would make her relation with Ridwan continue. She considered getting a divorce from her husband to marry Ridwan, but she couldn’t get herself to talk about it to her family. She should have done that before becoming a candidate. Now that she was elected to the Knesset, it seemed to be an impossible task.

  4- Tuesday 11:45 pm

  Warehouse

  30 km from Damascus,

  The call from his father had rattled Ghassan. When he recognized his father’s phone number on the screen, his first thought was that something had happened to his mother, but the terror in the trembling voice of his father had put him on guard immediately. His father’s talk was interrupted, and an unknown voice came on the phone:

  “Ghassan. This is Abu Ahmed from the PIJ in Syria. We have taken over Ras al-Zayn from the Hezbollah. Your family, and especially your son, are in my custody, in your father’s house. Don’t worry, they are safe with us.”

  Anger rose in Ghassan’s throat and he was ready to roar all the insults he knew, but the coldness of the voice kept him in check.

  “Leave them alone! What have they done to you?”

  “They have done nothing to us, but you will! If you want to see your family alive, you must do as I say.”

  The line went off.

  Ghassan fumbled with the buttons to call back. The phone rang five times before somebody
picked it up.

  “Are you ready to cooperate with us?” said Abu Ahmed.

  “What do you want?”

  “First, I want you to say the words: yes, I am ready to cooperate with you, only then we can talk about our request.”

  Now Ghassan was baffled. The idea of his family being not only hostages, but also in danger of being slaughtered, and that their lives depended on his attitude, was heavy to bear. But why hold them hostage? Maybe, he thought, they did it for a ransom.

  “How can I be sure that you won’t harm them?” he said.

  “You have no way of being sure of that, but I can tell you that if you do as you are told, you’ll be able to join your family safely and move freely to Lebanon. Now, is it a yes or a no? Or, should I convince you by letting your son Majid ask you?”

  The pressure on his chest increased while his mind raced and wondered what he could give to these guys that was valuable enough. He checked again his phone to make sure it really was his father’s number on the screen.

  He gave in. He said, “Yes; I am ready to cooperate with you,” and listened to the chilling instructions given by the cold, threatening voice.

  ————

  His radio came to life. Just a beeping chime.

  He depressed the squelch handle, and he identified himself by transmitting a pre-established chime to confirm that he was listening.

  He took out from his breast pocket a little book and scribbled the figures transmitted on the radio.

  He quickly repeated the figures on the radio, pressed the squelch handle and transmitted again his attributed identification chime. Transmission over, message well received. He now had to decode the figures to find out the address of the new warehouse where they were supposed to go tonight, where they would spend two days hiding from view.

  He turned towards his man and announced,

  “It’s time, guys! Pack everything and get ready! Departure in half an hour.”