Hamas: Target Of Retribution: My Last Encounter with Ismail Abu Shanab

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I wondered how a man of his sophistication and education had come to such beliefs. "I was born in Gaza one year after my parents were expelled from their town," he answered. "From the day I opened my eyes, I faced Israeli threats all the time." Like most Palestinian men of his generation, he spent his formative years in Israel's prisons: eight years in an Ashkelon jail, two in a solitary cell underground. And like most of those exiled to the miseries of Gaza, he said he would never give up the right to return to his home village of al-Jayeh near Ashkelon. "If we fear Israel," he said, "that will leave them in our place. That's what happened to our fathers and grandfathers. So one of the lessons for us is never to let go of our land under fear of Israel." Living by that logic has cost Ismail Abu Shanab the chance ever to go home again. By Johanna McGeary