In the early evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a small truck rattled its way toward an Israeli military base on the front lines. The driver, a Palestinian man with weathered hands and sharp eyes, was known in certain circles as a black market dealer. Tonight, his cargo was a truck bed filled with canned beer, carefully hidden under a tarp.
He rolled to a stop at the entrance of the base, and the Israeli soldiers, weary from another day of tension and uncertainty, perked up at the sight of him. They knew what he had, and in a place where pleasures were few, the arrival of alcohol was more than welcome.
“Evening,” the dealer said in a low voice as he climbed out of the truck. The soldiers quickly surrounded him, the glint of desperation in their eyes.
“How much for the lot?” one soldier asked, already reaching for his wallet.
The dealer named his price, and the soldiers, not interested in haggling tonight, quickly handed over a thick wad of cash. Within minutes, the cans were being distributed, and the sound of beer cracking open filled the air.
They drank quickly, greedily, the bitterness of the beer mixing with the bitterness in their hearts. As the alcohol began to take effect, the complaints started.
“All we get is water, and it’s not even drinkable,” one soldier slurred. “We flush it down the toilet and pretend we drank it.”
Another soldier chimed in, “That damn captain, always barking orders, never thinking about what it’s like out here for us.”
The dealer listened, his face impassive. He’d heard these kinds of gripes before—soldiers were the same on both sides, he knew. Frustrated, scared, tired of the endless cycle of violence.
After a while, one of the soldiers, his face flushed from the beer, looked at the dealer with bleary eyes. “You heard anything about Hamas? You think they really want peace?”
The dealer paused, considering his words carefully. “I hear things,” he said slowly, “but who knows what’s true? Some say they want peace, but others say they’re just playing for time. It’s not so simple.”
The soldier nodded, his expression serious now. “Yeah, nothing ever is.”
The dealer climbed back into his truck, ready to leave. As he drove away, he glanced in his rearview mirror at the soldiers, now sitting in a loose circle, their voices low, the empty cans scattered around them. The war would continue, he knew, but for a brief moment, the lines between enemy and friend had blurred, if only because of a few cans of beer and a shared sense of exhaustion.
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