Bethlehem - 

“There is no victory without sacrifice, and there is no freedom without pain.” This is how the author of the novel "Sacrifice and Victory 1", the freed Palestinian prisoner Mahmoud al-Bulbul, 25, began his talk to Al Jazeera Net about his book, which tells the story of the Palestinian stalker wanted for the Israeli occupation.

The novel talks about the father of Mahmoud, the martyr Ahmed Al-Balbul, whose sacrifice began when he was 17 years old, after he was arrested for the first time for writing Palestinian slogans on a wall in the city of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank.

captive and chased

And then the protagonist of the novel, Balbul the father, lived 15 arrests in the Israeli occupation prisons, for about 15 years, the last of which was the introduction of a weapon for the Palestinian resistance during the second intifada at the end of 2000, by sea.

The martyr Al-Bulbul fought several confrontations with the jailer and the investigation, without confessing anything, before he was released and joined the armed resistance defending Bethlehem in what is known as the 40-day invasion of the West Bank, especially the siege of the Church of the Nativity in 2002, before he became a chaser of the Israeli occupation.

The novel tells the details of the life of Martyr Balbol and his pursued companions, and their suffering with movement and disappearance from view, and their attempt not to go to Palestinian citizens;

So that they would not be harmed by the occupation because of their help, which made the life of the pursuers very difficult.

Ahmed Al-Balbol, mediated by Issa Qaraqe, head of the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority (right) and member of the Writers’ Union Walid Al-Hodali (communication sites)

Ahmed Al-Balbol, the writer of the novel, describes in his talk to Al-Jazeera Net how his father was able to chase the occupation as well;

Through his steadfastness, and his resort to Palestinians who did not reveal the secret of his stay with them, and their preservation of the resistance rifle that the occupation wanted to remove in any way, and they became an example to follow.

Al-Bulbul says that the novel "Sacrifice and Victory 1" tells several stories, in minute details of the life of the stalker, his psychological and physical condition, his communication with his family, and how he was subjected to attacks from the occupation and survived more than once, until his father was martyred in 2008 in an ambush of the occupation with his three companions, Muhammad. Shehadeh, Issa Marzouk, and Imad al-Kamel.

Questions in prison

The writer of the novel had experienced administrative detention and a hunger strike with his brother Muhammad for a period of 76 days, during which he was subjected to various types of pressures, investigations and isolation despite the short period.

This experience always made him wonder, how did his father spend all these years in the dungeons of the occupation?

How did he spend his stalking years?

What are the details of his life in those periods?

Which he wanted to express in his narration, so that these sacrifices would be an answer for future generations, how the price of victory was a great and painful sacrifice, and he promised that there would be other narrations bearing a number other than “Sacrifice and Victory 1”.

For his part, Walid Al-Hodali, a member of the Palestinian Writers Union, described the novel "Sacrifice and Victory 1" as a type of documentary literature, and literature of resistance and freedom in a way that documented a critical historical period in the resistance of the occupier, and the diaries of a stalker engaged with the occupation around the clock.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Hodli believes that the content of the novel was describing the state of the stalker who maintained his revolution, despite the general trend, at that time, to move from the state of revolution to the state of power, which increased pressure on him to maintain his command.

The unveiling ceremony of the novel "Sacrifice and Victory 1" in Bethlehem (Al-Jazeera)

Victory of the spirit of redemption

The writer of the novel was able to give accurate details that the protagonist of the novel was his father, who was living the contradiction between responding to the call of duty, or responding to the frustrating reality at that period, according to Al-Hodli, which made him live a strong internal struggle, but his revolution triumphed over other calls.

The novel also focused on what it called the frustrated people, who discourage the pursuer, and sometimes increase his siege, and in return it answers how he found people who stood with him, and were willing to sacrifice until the last breath.

Al-Bulbul mentioned this in the story of a Palestinian Christian widow who gave his father full assistance, and was willing to sacrifice everything to protect him.

Al-Hodli says, "The reader of the novel will love freedom par excellence, and see the breath and spirit of freedom and its violence."