Over two years ago, in October 2023, I wrote of my own experience in the Middle East fifty years ago, in response to the then recently started retaliation war of Israel against the population of Gaza. At the time I wrote: It could be a theme for a new book - perhaps it will appear at some stage.
Well, the book is there. Contested Land was published at Bookmundo last month, and a publishing contract for the Dutch edition Het betwiste land was recently signed: publication is planned in October.
Contested Land saw the light due to my horror and indignation over the slaughter inflicted by the Israeli army. I wrote of it previously .
Meanwhile, following the still-continuing Gaza war, the world has been shaken up further by the American-Israeli attack on Iran, where the previous American blunders in Irak and Afghanistan are being repeated without thinking twice. Israel now extends its brutal campaign in Gaza to Lebanon, once again without Western politics lifting a finger, probably for geopolitical and ideological reasons. And despite ignoring international law, probably Western politicians are glad to see someone hitting the regime in Iran. Until it drags us down into a worldwide recession, but then it is too late.
A political thriller with a message
I went back into time to write a political thriller against the background of the Middle East between 1973 and 1980. It is primarily a thrilling story about people, but also contains an underlying message because I don’t mince words about the warring factions: not about the Arabs, nor about Israel.
Although judging from the news one wouldn’t expect it, in the Middle East ordinary people are living like you and me, who have to keep going despite being exposed to extreme violence and terror. Contested Land is about ordinary people and their traumatic experiences: a Dutch sailor, an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian family. The story is pure fiction, but largely embedded in historical fact, and also describes the political and diplomatic deception machine running in the background.
To everyone wishing to form an educated opinion, I’d advise to study the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I did so, and I followed the often depressing news. My sources are a range of informative articles on Wikipedia, books written by Palestinians, Lebanese and by Dutch and Israeli journalists and historians, and documentaries about the deeply divided Israeli society.
I tried to get to the bottom of the ideology that poisons the matter and form an honest opinion. The result of my research is the background of Contested Land.
The new book is available as a paperback and an e-book from my website.
A preview
To give you a preview, here are a few episodes from the book.
1973
We ran into the corridor which was filled with smoke and dust. I almost tripped over a dead body - I recognised the guard who had beaten me days on end. He was stone dead, blood on his face. Further on there was a huge gap in the wall, bent pieces of reinforcing iron pointing into the passage, which was littered with concrete rubble.
Together with the masked men we crawled through the gap, emerging into an alley where more commandos were waiting, armed to the teeth, and a few more prisoners who spoke the same language as my cellmate and the attackers. We ran into the alley with a rearguard of two armed men. Having been in a jail cell for a month, I wasn’t very fit anymore and hardly managed to keep up.
We were in a labyrinth of narrow roads and alleys, an ancient Arabian souk where the commandos apparently knew their way. After about ten minutes we paused and a heated discussion ensued between my cellmate and two of the attackers, who pointed at me. The pilot explained who I was, upon which one of them told me in English that they wouldn’t take me with them because I wasn’t an Israeli soldier. From then on I had to find my own way, he said. The commandos and the released Israelis ran into a side road and left me quite alone in the dark alleyway.
Fear gripped my heart - what could I do? I had to make myself scarce as fast as I could, ducked and ran through a maze of alleys, hoping I didn’t run in circles. I turned a corner where a light shone over a doorway. The door suddenly opened, possibly due to the distant upheaval. A heavily made up middle-aged woman peered out. She noticed my utter fear and my battered appearance and spoke to me in Arabic. I shook my head indicating I didn’t understand her, upon which she replied in broken English: ‘Police want you?’
I nodded.
‘Come, quick!’
The woman quickly drew me into the doorway and shut and bolted the door behind us. She preceded me through a long corridor, which opened onto a dimly lit courtyard.
* * *
I wasn’t allowed much time to ponder, because a mile or so short of Bireh Akkar we suddenly stood still. There was a long queue ahead of us, and Hasan, peering along the line of cars, became worried as it dawned upon him what was happening in the distance. Suddenly he looked at us, pointing ahead: ‘kataeb, kataeb, go, quick!’
‘Kataeb?’ Maryam sat upright in shock, looking at me. ‘Kataeb is the falange, the mafia. They hate all Palestinians. We have to get out.’
I didn’t hesitate a second, grabbed our bundle and opened the cab door. We jumped out and dived into the bushes. In the distance along the road someone began shouting.
‘Run,’ I said, pulling her by her arm towards the tree line twenty yards away. A rifle shot rang out, which fortunately missed us.
We were in the trees now, stumbling down through the thick scrub towards the sound of running water. There was a stream, we plunged through ankle-deep water and clambered up the other bank. More bushes plucked at our clothes. On the far side where we had come from, we heard men call to one another and struggle through the bushes. We found a place to hide in a shallow cavity under an overhanging rock, hidden from view by thick undergrowth. I pushed Maryam in, lay down in front of her and drew a fallen branch over us. I heard her gulp deep lungfuls of air, her arm was around me, her heart hammering against my back.
1980
I put us back on course and made a note in the watch journal. At ten I did the weather observation: wind, sea, swell, cloud cover, temperature, dew point, barometer reading. The sun didn’t show itself. The watch routine went on - I took a few charts from the drawer in the chartroom, and between keeping the lookout and an occasional check of the radar, I made the latest corrections to the chart. Inked in for permanent changes, in pencil for the temporary ones.
The hallucination of the Oostkerk reared its ugly head again. I had to concentrate. Had to.
At ten-thirty the Old Man came up. ‘Morning, Nick. How is it going?’
‘A little bumpy, Captain. Occasionally we ship a little water, but it hasn’t gone worse since I came on watch.’
‘Even so, let’s hold on to those ninety revs. If we increase speed, we’ll be in for a plastering.’
‘Yes, we’re doing as well as we can.’
‘The first mate told me that you didn’t reply to the telephone this morning. He sent the lookout to call you, but he couldn’t wake you up.’
‘I have nightmares, Captain. I am fast asleep during such an episode, but I seem to yell my head off.’
‘Has it anything to do with that matter of six years ago?’
‘I think so. It seems as if it troubles me more recently. I also have hallucinations in the daytime.’
When I had come aboard and introduced myself to the Old Man, he had told me that he knew Van de Merwe very well, the Captain of the Oostkerk, who had failed his medical due to his injuries and now had become head of the Nautical Department of the company. From him he had heard what happened to us on that fateful morning in Latakia. He said that if I needed to talk with him I shouldn’t hesitate.
Perhaps this was the time to do so.
* * *
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a security problem and have to take avoiding action. We are going to approach the runway from the other end. Please be calm, there is no danger, the aircraft is all right,’ was the message over the intercom.
A security problem? I was off to a good start then… we were warned to prepare for a rough landing, because we had to land from the south, with the wind under our coat tails.
And indeed the landing was pretty rough as predicted. We bounced over the runway and I heard a bang coming from the right hand landing gear. From the window I saw a tyre fly to shreds. The pilot reversed the engines and gave full power, stopping us safely about 200 yards from the end of the runway. The Lebanese army cordoned off the aircraft and after half an hour a rolling stairway was brought up, and a few buses appeared to take us to the terminal. When I descended the stairs with my hand luggage, I looked aside at the plane. There was an innocent-looking pattern of holes in the side. We had been fired at, apparently by an idiot with a small calibre weapon. That the bullets hadn’t passed right through was a miracle.
Welcome to Beirut.
A taxi cab took me to a cheap hotel in the eastern sector, where I’d stay during my interviews for a temporary job as a logistics manager at the local Field Office of the UNRWA.
That night I heard rifle fire and explosions from the western sector of the city. Sleep wouldn’t come to me.
* * *
 |
| Beirut in pre-civil war days (1973) |
Transporting humanitarian goods wasn’t without risk. One example was a lorry that arrived with bullet holes in its cab. The driver was spooked as some wag fired at him from behind with an automatic weapon. He had stepped on the gas and made himself scarce double quick. Luckily, his cargo of building blocks had stopped most of the bullets, and his tyres hadn’t burst. He had skirted a Shiite village where recently Iranian troublemakers had arrived to train the local militia. Apparently, from a misplaced sense of fun, they had used his lorry for target practice. The trouble with Iranian infiltrators was on the increase since the Islamic revolution in Tehran, not a year previously. We found a new route for the lorries, which was more roundabout but safer. Exploring safe routes to transport food and building materials became our first priority.
Even driving around in a white car with the letters UN on the side and a blue flag at the antenna didn’t guarantee safety: once I was shot at from a house somewhere along the road. The Lebanese army belonging to the Gemayel government was useless - they only came out of their barracks when the Palestinians or Amal had been shooting.
Supplying the Mar Elias camp in West Beirut was a risky business. West Beirut was an enclave run by the PLO and also known as the Fakhani Republic, after the neighbourhood where the PLO had its headquarters, but Mar Elias had a mainly Christian population. The camp was guarded by falangists, who tried to keep the Palestinians at a distance. Beyond the ‘green line’, the Damascus Road that separated the western sector from the eastern one, the streets were largely ruined, so you had to drive avoiding the piles of rubble. Our lorries didn’t want to run into an obstacle, because those spots were a popular location for snipers lying in wait along the approach route.
If you had to stop, you were at risk of coming under fire. Once the driver of one of our lorries was killed on the way, which resulted in his employer throwing in the towel. Eventually we fitted thick steel sheets to the cabin doors, painted white with the legend UN on it, which hopefully offered the men a little protection from the side.
I had once been to Mar Elias, and I’d rather not remember. On the way, a heavy rocket hit a building not two hundred yards in front of us. The building collapsed - a minute later and we’d have been flattened. The road was blocked, so we turned around like greased lightning, and made ourselves scarce before being shot at.
* * *
During the third return trip to Beirut in Aizdihar we were intercepted by an Israeli patrol boat. We had just left Beirut harbour, when they came tearing up from the south with a great white bow wave, doing at least thirty knots. Just outside the harbour we were ordered in Arabic through the loudhailer, to stop and await a boarding party.
‘Better stop the ship,’ I said to Hakim, who stopped the engine. We rounded up to the slight sea and started wallowing to the waves set up by the Israeli boat, which came alongside and slammed against us with its rubber protection strake.
They came aboard, four men, all armed to the teeth, star of David on their sleeves, helmets, bullet-proof vests, sunglasses, walkie-talkies and a bad attitude.
‘Papers,’ commanded the sergeant leading the men, in Arabic.
‘I suppose you mean papers, please,’ I replied in English. I showed my UNRWA identity card. ‘You are interfering with a humanitarian mission of the United Nations, in Lebanese waters. Who the hell are you, and what are you thinking of?’
They recoiled a little, having expected a Lebanese skipper, not a foreigner who wasn’t intimidated but talked back to them.
‘We are fully authorised by the Lebanese government.’
‘Only for waters south of Tyre,’ I replied calmly. ‘You have no business here. Do you wish your representative at the United Nations to be called to account?’
‘You can say what you like, but we want to know what you are up to.’
‘I will speak to your commanding officer. He is welcome to talk with me.’
The sergeant spoke in his walkie-talkie. The answer wasn’t long in waiting. I was handcuffed and bundled off to the Israeli boat. There I was shoved into a cabin with an armed chap at the door, who kept me at gunpoint as if I were a common terrorist. For a few hours we proceeded south at a leisurely pace, then we lay stopped for a moment before I heard the engines roar and we went off at thirty knots.
Towards evening the boat entered the naval harbour of Haifa. There I was thrown into a police car, carted off to what looked like a police station, and put into a room, my handcuffs removed.
A civilian entered the room, sat behind the table and stared at me without speaking a word.
* * *
The new
book is available as a paperback and an e-book from my website.
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