More than a month ago I wrote about the politics of a paycheck concerning a relative of mine, someone who had to go through many loops to get his paycheck reinstated by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Now the same person stars in a new post. Hassan comes from a large family in Gaza that has all sorts of interesting characters. One of those character is a former member of the Fatah preventative force, let’s call him Ahmad. Ahmad continued to live in Gaza after the Hamas takeover even though Ahmad’s colleagues fled to Ramallah out of fear of Hamas harassment and imprisonments. It turns out Ahmad was better off fleeing to Ramallah as well. Rumor has it that Ahmad maintained contacts with Ramallah and kept on criticizing Hamas and its policies. Hamas does not mind a little criticism per se, but what they do hate is outspoken criticism and the people that dish it out. When reports came of Ahmad’s vocal criticism and his past history as an officer of the Palestinian Preventative Security (the brainchild of Mohammed Dahlan creations) Hamas sent police forces to summon Ahmad to their headquarters. Knowing that the Hamas forces will not be too kind to him, Ahmad decided to go into hiding.

To in order to apply pressure to coerce him to turn himself in, Hamas detained a few of his relatives (something the British did and Israel loves to do). Since then, Ahmad decided to flee to Ramallah in order to avoid the uncertain future he has if Hamas finds him. When Hamas was unable to arrest him after some time, they sentenced him to death. In order to get to Ramallah Ahmad had to get to Eriz, the Israeli crossing. But before one reaches the crossing point, there is a Hamas run checkpoint put in place to screen for people like Ahmad as well as serving other functions. Ahmad called in a relative of his, Hassan who is a member of the Islamic Jihad, a stand up guy, reliable, and tough. Hassan agreed to help his relative out and hid with him for few days in the town of Beit Hanoun, the nearest town to the Israeli crossing.

Hassan’s plan was to take a bypass road through some orange groves; the same route taken by those who plan on launch rockets towards Israel. For company Hassan took two other guys on the hike along with his cousin Ahmed. As they approached the Eriz Crossing close enough to see the gates, an armed Hamas rocket prevention patrol showed up to their misfortune. Hassan who has combat training asked his cousin to run toward the Israeli crossing as fast as he could. Because of the proximity to the Israelis, the Hamas police could not fire on them. The two other guys ran away, and Ahmed made it to the Israelis, and Hassan engaged the six member unit. Now the details are sketchy, some say that Hassan used his martial arts and disarmed the officers, some say he held them back and fought with them. Hassan, as his cousin Ahmad, is essentially a dead man in Hamas’ little black book. The Hamas patrol arrested him and he has been in jail ever since.

Hassan is a distant relative of mine and this is how I know this tale, after a month of detention with Hamas, they stopped roughing him up and according to reports by his inmates he is a celebrity inside the jail for not confessing to anything. Now, one knows if Hassan will ever see the light of day again. But the Islamic Jihad—the group he is affiliated with is working with Hamas on his case. Finally, I do not take pride in making this post, and I know I struggled with the idea of making this story public, but I felt that this was a unique story. There are things that hurt us as Palestinians: those practices harm us and harm our cause. Sure, it’s easy to blame Israel; sure there is a lot of blame to go to those guys, but then what? Will that help us? Somehow I doubt that.

Related posts:

1. Hassan al Turabi
2. Dude, Get Your Hands Off My Bird!
3. The Politics of a Paycheck
4. Palestine’s Top Pizzaiolo
5. KABOBpoll II Closes: Where are Abu Mazen’s Balls?