Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

A few months after being released, Yousef was contacted by his Shin Bet handler, Captain Loai, who requested a meeting and drove them both to a safe house within a settlement. Yousef admitted that he told other Hamas members about being recruited to avoid torture, which Loai accepted without critique before handing him money. Weeks later, they met again, this time with other Shin Bet officers who engaged more in friendly conversation than interrogation. Loai continued to pay Yousef and gradually introduced him to the life of a spy. Given his good treatment at Israeli hands, Yousef wondered, “Why would I want to kill them? I was surprised to realize that I no longer did” (115). Without forgetting the conditions of the occupation or his own suffering at Israel’s hands, Yousef was also scarred by his experiences with Hamas in prison and delighted when the promise of his cooperation secured the release of his father. Yousef describes how Hassan put a stop to the forced confessions and cleared the names of many who had been harmed while in prison. Loai then gave Yousef even more money and told him to earn a bachelor’s degree, which he immediately recognized “was a good investment for them” (117). His handlers treated him with courtesy, and Yousef found himself questioning his previously held assumptions, wondering if his father was wrong about Israel all along.

At the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, Yousef befriended a British man who took him to a Christian study group. He notes that this parallels Saul, the first-century persecutor of Christians, who had a revelation that led him to embrace Christianity, later becoming St. Paul. Yousef enjoyed the group and eagerly read the New Testament he received there, finding in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount “the message [he] had been searching for all [his] life” (122). Yousef came to believe that even if the state of Israel were to disappear, “[they] would still fight. Over nothing. Over a girl without a head scarf. Over who was toughest and most important. Over who would make the rules and who would get the best seat” (123). Still, his new views clashed with what his life had been so far, making him even more confused.

By 2000, the Palestinian Authority had severely weakened Hamas, so Hassan resumed the life of an imam. This also left Yousef with little to do for Shin Bet, so he traveled with his father and met with Yasser Arafat, who he came to see as “a cheap ham, who bought his place in the limelight with Palestinian blood” (126). Arafat rejected a historic peace offering that would have included 90% of the West Bank, baffling Yousef’s Israeli handlers, but Yousef came to believe that Arafat tied his own power and prestige to perpetual conflict rather than peace. In September of 2000, Yousef and Hassan visited a major official of Fatah, the largest PLO faction, who told them that there was a plan for another Intifada. He said that Hassan should spur Hamas into participating so that the PLO could outmaneuver them on the public stage. Hassan was very reluctant but concluded that if Hamas did not join, they would be accused of obstructing the peace process.

The precipitating event of the Intifada was the visit of Israeli general Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the area featuring the Western Wall sacred to Jews and the Al-Aqsa Mosque sacred to Muslims. Israelis believed that there were Muslim efforts to destroy Jewish antiquities and make it a purely Islamic site, so Sharon’s visit was meant to deter any such efforts. Sharon’s visit itself was uneventful, and Fatah’s initial attempts to provoke demonstrations were unproductive; however, by the following day, violence had escalated quickly. The Shin Bet call in Yousef, who felt that Arafat “released a terrible genie” (132), a spirit of vengeance among the Palestinians that fed into the radical demands of Hamas. As the death toll rose, “[Yousef] knew the time had come for [him] to begin working for Shin Bet” (134).

At the age of 22, Yousef became the only Israeli intelligence asset within the inner circle of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. His first task was to investigate a new militant group called the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. He began by monitoring the house of Hamas leader Maher Odeh, noticing a group of armed men leave in a green Chevrolet. Yousef concluded that they were members of Force 17, part of Arafat’s bodyguard, and was surprised that they would be associating with a Hamas figure rather than remaining within their leader’s compound. Yousef’s information, combined with other sources of Israeli intelligence, helped confirm that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was actually part of Arafat’s own organization. After a failed attempt to take out the leadership of that group, they fled to Arafat’s compound, but the leader then accidentally killed himself.

Yousef frequently accompanied his father in meetings with Arafat. However, he was barred from further meetings after instinctively wiping Arafat’s kiss off his cheek. Still, Yousef could copy his father’s notes from those meetings, just as Hassan was becoming one of Hamas’s most prominent figures. One day, Yousef accompanied his father to a demonstration that was brutally suppressed by the Israeli military, causing many deaths. Yousef blames “the very Palestinian leaders who had led them and their children like goats to the slaughter” (143-44). When Israel killed a Palestinian, various factions scrambled to capitalize on the publicity. Even Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein paid tens of thousands of dollars to the families of suicide bombers.

Yousef learned, to his horror, that some of his younger brothers were joining the demonstrations against Israel. Sickened by the endless violence, his Christian influences led him to believe that “loving and forgiving one’s enemies is the only way to stop the bloodshed” (147). He was also becoming disillusioned with Muslim leaders who distort the teachings of the Qur’an to endorse violence against Israel. In March 2001, Yousef was stunned when one of his friends became the first suicide bomber from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Shin Bet charged Yousef with finding out if there was a new independent cell directing suicide attacks, as he personally knew all the suspected leaders. His meetings with them produced little information, however, and Shin Bet held off on making arrests in case they let the real culprits go free. In the meantime, Yousef took a job with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) helping to provide the people of the region with potable water. At one point, Loai warned Yousef of a large raid the next day in Ramallah, which Yousef passed on to his boss at USAID, sparing its employees from terrible violence. Yousef promised his boss to deliver all necessary warnings, provided that there were no follow-up questions.

The Intifada continued to rage into 2001, with increasingly deadly suicide bombings becoming a regular occurrence. Israel took revenge by launching missiles at Hamas leaders, killing civilians in the process. Yousef worried that his father might also be a target, hoping that his own connection to the government would stay their hand. Since he was not sure, he decided to take personal responsibility for his father’s safety, placing him in a hotel and handling his contacts with other Hamas members. As a result, “[he] gained trust and respect within the military wing and became the go-to Hamas guy for other Palestinian factions as well” (159). Yousef reached out to Khaled Meshaal, a major figure living in Damascus who had survived an Israeli assassination attempt several years earlier. Yousef recruited a courier to make contact with Meshaal, unknowingly carrying a letter in his shoe that also carried a listening device.