Ramallah: It took Abu Ahad 24 long hours to get from his home in the Gaza Strip, through Israel, to the relative safety of Ramallah, following Hamas's takeover of Gaza.
An officer with Force 17, a special operations unit closely aligned with Fatah, he was among around 180 Fatah men who were able to leave Gaza for the West Bank, many of whom have since been holed up in Ramallah's Grand Park Hotel.
Fatah members who managed to get through to Ramallah say they feel lucky to be alive.
Abu Ahad, 30, chain smokes in between coffees and telephone calls with the latest updates from Gaza. He says he fears for his family's safety, after armed Hamas men allegedly tried to strong-arm members into giving information on his whereabouts.
Surrounded by enemy
Speaking in the smoke-filled hotel lobby alongside a dozen other men who tell a similar tale, Abu Ahad appears nervous and tense, repeatedly looking over his shoulder.
"I was stationed at our base near the Presidential compound when we came under attack by the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades," he told Gulf News. "We didn't have enough men and were being bombarded so heavily that I was forced to hide."
Abu Ahad says he managed to escape and returned to his home in the nearby Al Rimal neighbourhood, when a group of armed Hamas men turned up on his doorstep.
"They asked me how I was and then came into my house. My wife was with her family, so I was the only one home. They came into my living room, closed the door and told me to hand over all of my weapons, which I did," he said.
"They said that they wouldn't do anything to me, that they knew that I was a good person. But when I opened the living room door, everything in the house was gone - my computer, fridge, everything."
Soon after, Abu Ahad says, jeeps surrounded his home and fearing for his life, he escaped from a back window, to the house of a fellow Fatah member, whose family smuggled him out of the area.
After a fraught journey through Hamas checkpoints, he was dropped at the Erez border crossing with Israel - a maze of electronically operated gates, doors and chambers, - where he waited for over 12 hours.
"Then, at 3.30am the [Israeli] soldiers called me for interrogation. They knew everything about me - exactly where I had been shot by the Israelis; that I had been in an Israeli jail. But, they still gave me permission to enter Israel to travel to Ramallah."
While some of his fellow Gaza exiles plot their revenge, Abu Ahad says he does not blame Hamas entirely, but he won't forgive them.
"They did this because they want the authority and power, but I also blame the leadership [Fatah] for not stopping them."
