The five men were assigned a martyrdom operation, so they gathered in a tunnel, and there they lived for two weeks in the tunnel waiting for the decisive moment (Getty)

Ammar Al-Zaben is another novelist produced by Israeli prisons and the struggle of the resistance. His gun stopped, so he struggled with his pen. He wrote and leaked from his prison novels whose heroes were real characters, in which he transported us to their moments in the field and in captivity. He himself was the hero of some of those novels.

Al-Zaben has a pen that makes you live the events as their owners lived them, and imagine yourself with the heroes of his works, and your imagination runs wild to envision places, fly through the streets of Jerusalem, the mountains of Nablus, and the villages of Palestine, think of solutions to dilemmas, and experience feelings of struggle, stubbornness, and patience.

What is surprising is that Al-Zabin is a Qassami prisoner who lived in prisons more than he lived outside them. He knew the cells when he was young in 1994, when he was 16 years old at the time. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, and when he came out, he formed the “Martyrs for the Prisoners” cell, which carried out operations to capture prisoners. Israeli soldiers with the aim of exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners.

Thus, he was arrested again in 1997, and the Israeli courts issued life imprisonment sentences against him 27 times, or the equivalent of 2,700 years, on charges of responsibility for operations in which 27 Israeli soldiers were killed, and 323 were injured. Thus, he became one of the people with the highest sentences in Israeli prisons, and the Israeli newspapers considered His arrest was a great success for the security services.

In the tunnel, we saw them as humans exchanging stories, and we saw them as angels whose souls and hearts were attached to the One and Only God. Finally, after a long wait, the moment came after a large number of soldiers gathered on the ruins of Imad’s house. Alaa whispered to them: Get ready and trust in God.

As for him, he met the ruling with a sarcastic smile, raised his Qur’an and the victory sign, and proceeded to his dark prison with his head held high.

Thus, his age, which has now exceeded about 45 years, has only lived for approximately 17 years outside of prison. During his imprisonment, he obtained a high school diploma, then a bachelor’s degree in political science, then a master’s degree in political science from Al-Quds Open University, after which he joined the doctoral program.

In his second arrest, he was subjected to severe torture that lasted for 3 months during the interrogation in Al-Maskobiyya Prison. He was deprived of visiting his family for 8 years, until his mother was martyred while participating in a hunger strike. In solidarity with the prisoners in August 2004, his father followed her, and they then allowed his wife and two daughters, Bashaer and Bisan, to visit him in 2005.

When a fighter writes

Ammar Al-Zaben says: The most difficult type of literary writing is to be a participant in the event. You write what you were a part of, and this is what prompted him to repeatedly postpone the writing project for about twenty years, but when he finally spoke, he deserved to be heard.

Experience and tribulation gave him that quality that critics call: “authenticity,” and the works he presented “humanized the event.” The resistance fighter was no longer an individual whose identity and feelings were unknown, passing by like a number on a news bulletin, or reading his last words that he recorded and died.. We are in In these novels, we live with him his entire life, sharing his hopes, frustrations, moments of ups and downs, and his victory or martyrdom.

Al-Zaben has written 6 novels so far, all of them based on real events: “When Oranges Bloom,” “Behind the Lines,” “Ebal’s Revolution,” “Angelica,” “The Clique,” ​​and “The Road to Jaffa Street.”

With the "clique"

We stop here at the novel “The Clique,” ​​and perhaps we will stop with other works in future articles. Al-Zaben wrote this novel in the Zionist Ramon prison after he obtained its details from two of its heroes who were captured. Its events take place during the Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2014, and it depicts... The human life of these heroes, and as is the custom of Al-Zaben, the work, with all its names, dates, places, and events, is real from A to Z, and he dedicated his novel to the elite men of Al-Qassam in Gaza, “under the earth, above it, and in the depths of its sea.”

When you read the novel now, you are transported to the time of Gaza, which was once a city containing homes, but it was neither like cities nor like homes, before the Zionist brutality demolished it in the last war of extermination, leaving not one stone upon another.

The event begins in the Al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Yunis, where the first hero, Ibrahim, resides. Rockets descend on this neighborhood like lightning, shattering memories, and burning the map of the lost homeland hanging on the wall of the house of “Umm Khaled” (his mother). This is nothing but a continuation of the story of the suffering that the mother experienced from the time of the Nakba. When the Zionist gangs expelled her from Beersheba, she is still waiting to return to her home, to which she has the key.

As for Ibrahim’s wife, she is an example of a Palestinian woman who expects her husband to go out to resist the occupation and not return, but she is trying to convince herself that “God Almighty will keep for her the good man and the wonderful lover. It is not fair for the beautiful stories to die in Gaza, and it is not destined for the invaders to win.” We must, and our faith must resist their falsehood, so that life will triumph and love will remain.. And I hate for my husband to leave me even though I know that goodness lies in repelling the occupiers from us and our land.”

Al-Ghazi...the living martyr

The relationship of Gazans with electricity lives in the novel, as it is “a luxury that is not worthy of refugees, toilers, and dreamers...and if you are Gazan, you must hate electricity, so as not to get used to the few hours of its availability. Every two years there is a war, the first victim of which is the old power station.”

The Israeli plane fired a missile, destroying the house of Yasser (the second hero) in the camp, killing his family, and his heart burned at the loss of his martyr mother. Just as the hearts of the people of Gaza burn every day at the loss of their loved ones, but there is a rule that everyone has realized, which is: “If you are a Gazan, you are a martyr.” With the suspension of execution until your turn comes in one of the successive wars, or the extended years of siege, or via a smart missile under the pretext that you are a time bomb... Therefore, do not describe the Gazan when he leaves as dead, for it is written on his forehead when he is born: I am from Gaza, therefore I am a martyr!

As for Alaa (the third hero), he said to his mother: You are in my eyes, mother.. but you know that I chose a path that ends in one of two things: to obtain martyrdom on the battlefield, and the second is to hold your beautiful hand and fly you to our wonderful village in Lydda after its liberation from the Zionists. And that is not far from God.

In love with Palestine, my mother, and hope!

As for the fourth hero, Ahmed (nicknamed Samara), he is a lover who organizes words for his beloved that he extracts from the ocean of his heart. Love in Gaza has a special flavor, but when his fiancée (Amal) visits their home, he receives a summons letter, so he is forced to leave her, only to find Alaa, Ibrahim, and Muhammad waiting for him, and Imad joins them, thus forming the clique (group) that has been assigned a special mission.

The novel stops at the dreams of its characters. Amal was drawing in her imagination the image of the knight of her dreams, and she said: I want him to be a mujahid who carries within him the love of martyrdom and defending his land. Whoever does not do that, I fear for myself and my children.

As for Ahmed (Samara), he says: “Palestine, my mother, Amal, and Venice will never leave me. I cannot separate one from the other. Whoever abandons one of them will lose the others.” He continues, speaking about his vision of love: “In order for us to rebuild our land, it must be... Clean from evil, and in order to achieve this we must have the means of strength, the most important of which is the good family that begins with me and my faithful fiancée, which pushes me to fight for her and for my country, my religion, and my mother.”

Ibrahim’s wife completes the picture: “Only the fighters are lovers, and others are fleeting in love, because only the love protected by the gun and mixed with the sweat of the revolution deserves immortality.

With the five men in the tunnel

Each hero in the novel has his own story, but they are united by the fact that they are “monks by night, fighters by day” who stand on firm moral ground and unwavering faith.

The novel explains the progressive educational stages that a fighter goes through before he becomes one of the “Al-Qassam elite,” with its faith, doctrinal, and cultural aspects, to become a mujahid committed to his religion, his people, and his nation. He is not selected into the ranks of Al-Qassam except after verifying his character toward his family and the people, and his willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of his lost homeland. .

The five men were assigned a martyrdom operation, so they gathered in a tunnel under Imad’s house, which was destroyed by Israeli planes. There they lived and we lived with them for two weeks in the tunnel waiting for the decisive moment. Their food was a few dates and a drink of water, and they did not even enjoy a breath of fresh air.

In the tunnel, we saw them as humans exchanging stories, and we saw them as angels whose souls and hearts were attached to the One and Only God. Finally, after a long wait, the moment came after a large number of soldiers gathered on the ruins of Imad’s house, and Alaa whispered to them: Get ready and trust in God.

End or beginning?

The group detonated the explosive device in the opening of the tunnel, causing an explosion that tore apart the bodies of a large number of occupation soldiers. Before the rest of the soldiers woke up, the Qassam elite emerged from the second eye of the tunnel and confronted them from “zero distance” and caused many deaths. Their success and the enemy's confusion.

However, the battle continued for hours until the fighters began to run out of ammunition, and Ahmed (Samara) was the first martyr. When blood gushed from his body, he said to his beloved (Amal): “Here is my blood... I would not be stingy with it for a homeland. You are the most beautiful thing in it, and the meeting place is Paradise.”

Ahmed was martyred, holding his weapon, and many bullets had penetrated his body. He suppressed his feeling of pain, and chose to leave standing in the calm of the trees, with his eyes protecting the back of the nation.

Alaa was the second martyr. His blood bled as he unleashed his takbirs. He fulfilled his oath: They would only pass through his body.

As for Imad, he was the master of the place. He managed to lure the enemy into a new ambush, and used hand grenades to inflict the greatest losses on them. Then a bullet pierced his smiling face, watering the olive trees with his blood.

Three were martyred, and the rest of the group, Ibrahim and Muhammad, were fighting the enemy soldiers from inside the tunnel, until their ammunition ran out. An Israeli soldier threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel, so they had to get out. They captured them and underwent investigation in Ashkelon prison. The “Al-Qassam Brigades” did not know that they were alive until after they appeared. In an Israeli prison.

This was the image of the heroic battle, as narrated by Ibrahim and Muhammad to the writer Ammar Al-Zaben, who felt the euphoria of victory over the shackles of prison, as he finished the last line of the novel.

Over the past six months, and over the years that preceded it, there have been thousands of stories of people like this group, of young people who love life and their country, and whose hearts are capable of love, but who love dignity and freedom, and are ready to sacrifice their lives for what they love...and the stories of all of these are waiting for someone to write them. .

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.