Engineers of Death

After we put our faith in God and everything was ready, we had to carry out the operation. We left our village around 1:30 AM Friday morning and, one day before (on Thursday), I took the bomb, which was a computer monitor, after I armed it and installed the shrapnel, which was nearly 1,500 metal balls, and hid it in a place close to the operation point.

We imagined that all 1,500 pieces of shrapnel would fly like bullets towards the target in a semi-circle. When we arrived, we divided up the tasks; we agreed that I would plant the bomb… in high point, parallel to the heads and bodies of the Israeli soldiers, so I hid it among the grass on the nearby hill. We connected the bomb to the wire which would be usedlater to detonate the bomb and carried it 100 yards away from the bomb. I kept the safety key switched off and tested the remote to see if it sent a signal and the receiver received it. And I asked Huthaifa to go to the spot where he would detonate the bomb… and test the remote signal again from there, and he did. When the test results were OK, I told Huthaifa that everything was OK. Then I switched on the safety key and returned to the car. A few minutes after we left, I heard a huge explosion that shook the whole area.

At first I thought that the Israelis had shelled us from the nearby Jewish settlement, so we ran to the car and waited a minute for Huthaifa and then we drove back to the village. On our way back, Huthaifa told me that he had pushed the remote control button again by mistake, causing the bomb to explode.

This person I was going to meet had a special dress and look which I knew. The question I would have to ask him would be: Where is the Ministry of Education? He will tell you: It is in Bir Zeit. Then I will know that this is the right person.This person was the martyr Fouad Ismael Horani. He was studying in Ramallah the UNRWA teachers college which had graduated many brave lions in the field of battle before him, like Mohammed Abu Wardeh, Salah Jadallah, and Raed Shaghnobi. While I was speaking to him, I felt that I was speaking to an angel. I can’t find the words to describe him or even explain his talents. I will tell you about him later on when I discuss his martyrdom story.

‘Never has the face of freedom fighting looked so human! Brilliant prose from a man with a brilliant carreer!’

According to McLatchy, a total of 50,000 copies of the book are planned for release, 15,000 already out in the West Bank. The excerpts are certainly interesting – at moments they have a Tarantino film feel because so many things go wrong due to unexpected mechanical failure, human frailty and mistake. Unfortunately, other moments are like a Tarantino film on account of the sheer brutality invovled.