Chapter 50
Waleed Khalifa heard a large vehicle rumble to a halt outside the café’s kitchen door and stiffened, assuming it was the jackbooted
thugs of the Israel Defense Forces. Unconsciously, ingrained by habit, he furtively glanced around the small space to ensure
nothing incriminating was in view. The door opened and he saw his friend Hassan, and he exhaled his pent-up breath.
He said, “Can’t you text first? I thought the Israeli dogs were about to kick the door in to eat the leftovers.”
Hassan waved his hand at the dust and empty cabinets, saying, “If they’re going to eat here, they’re going hungry like everyone
else.”
Waleed had once been a cook in his uncle’s café, back when it was open, before his town had become ground zero for the IDF
fight in the West Bank. Located in the town of Jenin, the restaurant had been shuttered ever since the IDF had stormed the
refugee camp next door. Their life had been reduced to one of hardship and survival, with power limited to three or four hours
a day and supplies intermittent, if they arrived at all. All the suffering had led Waleed to turn from being a cook to an
underground militant, fighting what he saw as the oppression of the despised government of both Israel and the Palestinian
Authority.
After Hamas had attacked on October 7, things had gone from bad to worse in his town.
Located in what was known as “Sector A,” it was ostensibly under complete control of the Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli government paid no heed to that, attacking anyone of military age that happened to be in the street.
Even if Israel would respect Palestinian control, Waleed had learned it didn’t matter.
As far as he was concerned, the Palestinian Authority was nothing but a lackey for Israel, arresting, torturing, and killing just as wantonly as the Israeli dogs themselves.
Like Hassan, Waleed hadn’t started out as a guerrilla fighter. That had grown on him gradually as the abuses piled up. At
first it was simply no longer cooperating with the IDF or the PA, keeping quiet when he knew the information they sought.
Gradually, it grew to passive assistance, letting them use his uncle’s café to hide weapons and explosives. It wasn’t until
the IDF killed his cousin, a female teenager that had nothing to do with any underground activities, that he turned to actively
fighting back.
His uncle would have been mortified, had he known, but unlike a lot of the militants he knew—men who would brag at night,
living for the accolades—Waleed kept that part of his life secret, which is why he had become so successful.
When he’d finally decided to fight, it wasn’t hard for him to find ways to do so in the town of Jenin. Known as the Martyr’s
Capital by the Palestinians and the Hornet’s Nest by the Israelis, Jenin had been fighting the Israelis since the Nakba in
1948. In fact, the entire refugee camp consisted of the people who had fled their lands during Israel’s initial fight for
independence.
Now home to second and third generations living in squalor, composed of those whose ancestral lands had been seized by the
Israelis decades ago, the area was rocket fuel for the festering resentment. While secret, everyone knew someone who was a
fighter, like a twisted Masons group handed down membership from generation to generation.
He’d shown an aptitude for the fight, unlike his hothead peers, with skill at planning ambushes and leveraging second-order
effects of various attacks, focused on the propaganda value. Five years ago, before the upheavals currently reverberating
around the Middle East, he’d been transported through the ratlines into Syria, and then onwards to the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon,
where he trained for a year with Hezbollah, learning all manner of martial skills.
Now, with the fall of Syria and the evisceration of Hezbollah, those logistics lines had all but dried up, and he was one of the last that had the talent being called upon today. A skill that he’d been promised would lead to a great strike against the hated IDF.
Waleed said, “Don’t tell me you actually have the truck.”
Hassan smiled and said, “I do. Full of ‘soda canisters’ for the café.”
“You made it through the checkpoints with the accelerant? I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I. You’d think they’d know that your uncle’s café hasn’t served anything for close to a year, but they let me
through. Come out and see.”
Waleed followed Hassan to the back alley, seeing it filled with a panel truck large enough to make him move sideways to get
to the back. Hassan unlocked the clasp and raised the rear door, revealing bags of coffee, tea, and canned goods.
Waleed said, “Where is the accelerant? Is it fertilizer or what?”
Hassan clambered up, saying, “Follow me.”
Waleed did, stepping over various goods until he reached the back near the cab, where he saw what looked like six canisters
used for soda fountains, complete with commercial labels and valves. Hassan pointed at them and said, “That’s the accelerant.
I was told you don’t have to do anything special. Build the bomb however you like, just make it large enough to ignite the
accelerant, and we should have an explosion twice as big.”
Waleed tried to move one of the canisters, surprised at the weight. He said, “Heavy. What’s in it?”
Hassan shook his head, saying, “I have no idea. Some special sauce the Pasdaran invented.”
Waleed looked around the space, mentally measuring with his eyes. He said, “I have enough explosives for a hidden system,
but that’s not necessary here. I’m going to need more. Do you still have that cache of old artillery rounds?”
“I do. I was saving it for IED ambushes, though.”
Waleed said, “Let’s use it here. World War Z style.”
Hassan grinned at the inside joke, saying, “You finally get to do it.”
When the IDF began rolling into Jenin more than a year ago, Hassan had remarked that any suspicious activity brought the IDF
running like zombies to noise in the movie World War Z. Waleed had joked, “If only we could get them all to run into a stadium and then blow them up, like in the movie.”
From that germ of an idea, Waleed’s plan had bloomed. The Pasdaran had insisted on no militant activity for the last six months
to lure the IDF into a false sense of complacency, and Waleed and his men had complied. When given the word, he would unleash
his men, allowing them to simultaneously attack every checkpoint and IDF position within reach, then retreat into the ruins
of the Jenin refugee camp. When the IDF responded with overwhelming force, as they inevitably would, he would wait until they
flooded into the camp.
Then he would detonate this device.
Hassan said, “What is the attack timeline? Do you know yet?”
“No. It’s close, though. We need to be ready within two days, but we might have to wait after that. Make sure the men are
ready at a moment’s notice.”
“What are we waiting for? Why does the timing matter? Anything can change at any time. The longer we sit here, the more likely
they’ll find out our plan.”
“You are the only one who knows the entire plan. It will hold.”
“But what if another group conducts an attack? The PIJ or Hamas? They’ll bring the IDF in no matter how much we want them
not to, and they might find the truck.”
“I know, I know, but I’m told that we’re part of a larger plan. We don’t attack until we get the word from the Pasdaran. I
have a special cell phone solely for that. We wait for the phone to ring, and then we go. Not before.”
Hassan shook his head, but said nothing.
Waleed said, “Park this in the garage and let’s get to work on incorporating the extra explosives.”