Over the next 49 days, I spent most of my time locked in a small room on the second floor of a hospital. My jailer, who went by Mohammad, called himself a soldier of Hamas, but he didn’t look like a soldier. I was being guarded by a man in civilian clothes and held against my will in a civilian building.
Mohammad’s broken Hebrew contrasted with the fluent Hebrew that the Gazan businessmen had once spoken in my home. I can imagine that he might have been one of their sons and picked it up from them. I long for a world where he would have been able to build a business of his own, live in dignity and speak fluently with his Israeli neighbors with mutual respect. In that world, I do not believe he would have joined a terrorist group that sent him to watch over a kidnapped grandmother who wished him no harm.
Mohammad told me that had it not been for Hamas, he would have had no money or opportunities. It was not quite an apology, more of an explanation, but the bitter irony is that because of Hamas, we both now have nothing.
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