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Death Wish
Isabel Kershner
Can Bush�s call for new leadership, and the growing Palestinian alarm at the culture of suicide bombing, stop the carnage?
A few weeks ago, Noah Salameh�s 12-year-old daughter came home from basketball practice with the youth team at the Deheishah refugee camp in Bethlehem and announced that she wanted to go on a suicide mission.
"I said �What?!�" Salameh recounts. "I�m a totally non-violent person. I told her she�ll never go to basketball or leave this room again. She said she was only joking."
But Salameh, who founded the non-governmental Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation in the Bethlehem area two years ago, didn�t believe her. After some probing, his daughter opened up.
She said everyone was talking about Ayyat Ahras, the 17-year-old girl from De-heishah who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket in late March, killing two Israeli civilians and injuring 28. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, from Yasser Arafat�s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility. Among the youth in the camp and beyond, Ahras was being hailed as a hero.
"I have to take good care of my daughter," Salameh concludes, "and watch her."
Salameh, 50, a grass-roots activist and a refugee, spent 15 years in Israeli jails because of his involvement in what he vaguely terms as PLO resistance as a youth. Now he opposes the use of all violence, but he finds himself swimming against the popu-lar tide. Though the Palestinian internal debate over the suicide bombing phenomenon is starting to go public, the voices of protest remain restrained, and belong mainly to the intellectual elite.
Over 120 human bombs have been dispatched to Israel since the beginning of the intifada 21 months ago, claiming some 250 lives. The phenomenon shows no signs of abating. On the contrary, Palestinians describe the culture of suicide bombing, or "martyrdom," as having turned into a religion almost in and of itself. Those Palestinians who say they understand where the suicide bombers� motivation comes from, but are alarmed and horrified by their deeds, grope for ways to stop the flood.
Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Palestinian Society for the Study of International Affairs, an East Jerusalem think tank, has been asking himself for weeks why a 17-year-old girl, who was not a member of the radical, fundamentalist Hamas or even of the secular, mainstream Fatah, who did well at school and had a fianc�, would go to a Jerusalem supermarket on a death mission. "I believe she felt like she�d been raped," he says. "She doesn�t see Israelis as civilians. Every Israeli, to her, is the army. The enemy. Death is the only way to cleanse herself."
In response, Abdul Hadi has taken to collecting model owls. In Western culture, he explains, owls represent wisdom and luck. In Arabic tradition, they are considered a bad omen. "Everyone who comes in to my office hates my owls," he says. "Can I convince my culture that the owl is not a bad omen? Can I convince a shahid (martyr) that he won�t go to heaven? In our tradition, sacrificing one�s life for a cause, for the land, is to be praised. But in this case," he says, "it is suicide, homicide, terrorism that kills innocent people. Can I change the concept? That is the challenge."
On June 19, a day after a suicide bus bombing at Jerusalem�s Patt-Gilo junction killed 19 Israeli civilians, including an 11-year-old girl, came the first public Palestinian cry against what the protesters call such "military operations." In a full-page ad in the leading Palestinian daily Al-Quds, 55 academics and public figures signed a petition, entitled "A Call," asking those who stand behind the attacks on civilians inside Israel to reevaluate their positions and the results of their actions. Actions that, in the words of the petitioners, only deepen the hatred between the two peoples and give the Sharon government an excuse to continue with its "war of aggression."The first two signatories were PLO Jerusalem official Sari Nusseibeh, who openly seeks accommodation with Israel, and legislator Hanan Ashrawi. The list included many Jerusalemites, and a few individuals from the West Bank and Gaza.
That evening, a suicide attack at Jerusalem�s French Hill killed another seven Israelis, including a small child.
Expectedly, the petition stirred controversy. Israelis criticized the mealy-mouthed language of the text that made no reference to questions of morality or terrorism. The targeting of children and old people was only mentioned in the context of Israeli "aggression" against Palestinian towns and villages. Nusseibeh responded that the call was addressed to the parties behind the suicide attacks, and was phrased as such.
In truth, however, even the most moderate Palestinians are squeamish about taking a public moral stand against terrorism in the face of mounting civilian casualties on their own side. Days after the Al-Quds petition, three Palestinian children and a teacher were killed by Israeli tank and gun fire in Jenin. The army expressed regret for the mistake and ordered an investigation.
Though hundreds subsequently added their names to the Nusseibeh petition, Palestinians downplayed its potential, declaring the signatories to be respected individuals with no influence.
Abdul Hadi was invited to sign the petition but refused, saying that while he agreed with the sentiments, he didn�t like the hasty way it had been put together, by phone over two days and without consultation. He also criticized the organizers for using European Union funding for the ad. "If you�re sincere, you should sit, discuss and pay out of your own pocket," he says.
Saleh Abdul Jawwad, who heads the political science and history department at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, signed on the petition but expresses reservations. He says that while the suicide bombings are rejected by many academics -- and particularly among Jerusalem Palestinians who don�t suffer "the same amount of repression" as those in the West Bank -- they are very popular among the students. (The Patt-Gilo bus bomber was an MA student from Al-Najah University in Nablus.) Sharon�s policies, he goes on, are "pushing people to this." Like many Palestinian analysts, Abdul Jawwad blames the closures, the curfews and the humiliation he says every Palestinian experiences on a daily basis. He was roundly criticized by his student audience -- mostly Hamas supporters -- for a lecture he gave opposing suicide bombing in late May.
"Those who are against me have a good argument, to tell you the truth," he says. "Which is even if we stop, the Israelis continue. I talk about the moral aspects. Yet at a practical level, a few weeks ago there were no such actions for a while, but the checkpoints all remained in place." Abdul Jawwad was referring to the brief period of relative quiet following the Israeli military�s massive Operation Defensive Shield.
The Israeli responses to the terrorism -- including the closure of the territories, the use of warplanes against PA installations and other targets, the "targeted killings" of terror operators, military incursions into all the major cities of the West Bank and the imposition of curfews for days and even weeks, have awakened what Palestinian analysts call "sleeping forces." The conflict is taking on an increasingly Islamic hue. With it comes the traditional resort to revenge.
Abdul Hadi was shocked recently to see the mother of a Gaza gunman embracing her son and wishing him success in a farewell video he recorded before setting out on a suicide mission against a Jewish settlement. "I couldn�t understand it," he says, "but it was explained to me as revenge; historical, traditional, deep-rooted. She had been raising her son for that day."
Some Palestinians believe that the only voices that would count against such forces are those of the local Muslim religious authorities. But quiet efforts to engage them in a dialogue about martyrdom have come to naught. "They simply don�t want to discuss it," one confides.
The suicide bombings are only one issue on the Palestinian public agenda. A more popular one remains the demand for democratization and reform. Nobody was satisfied with the "cosmetic surgery" Arafat performed on his cabinet in early June.
But President Bush�s call, in his June 24 speech, for the Palestinians to replace their leadership with a new one not associated with terrorism doesn�t jibe at all with the local mood. On the ground, the Palestinians� own reform agenda and the agenda calling for reexamination of the methods of the intifada hardly converge, except in the form of a few personalities who advocate both, such as Ashrawi, and more privately, Arafat�s No. 2, Abu Mazen. For most Palestinians, these are two separate issues. Domestic criticism of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority springs from the fury over corruption and mismanagement, not the line the leadership has taken against Israel. The popular leaders of the Tanzim, Fatah�s militia, raise the anti-corruption, pro-democratization banner even while their operatives recruit suicide bombers.
"It�s not easy to say, but we have a Mafia around us," says Salameh, expressing the popular view. "Enough of the corruption. But I�m not saying enough of standing against Israel," he says.
Arafat has promised to hold municipal, legislative and presidential elections by the beginning of next year. If he runs for president, Palestinian analysts say, he will win, though no one is expecting him to repeat his 1996 election victory, in which he garnered 88 percent. "You in the West are satisfied with 50.1 percent," notes Ali Jarbawi, a respected West Bank political scientist. Abdul Hadi, for his part, predicts that Arafat won�t run -- though not because of Bush�s implicit call to remove him. "He is already the symbol, the father of the state. He won�t want to humiliate himself," Abdul Hadi wagers.
The various agendas have left Israelis questioning what the Palestinians, not to mention the suicide bombers, really want. Adding to the doubts, a recent poll by the Palestinian Jerusalem Media and Communications Center indicated that 51.1 percent of Palestinians see the intifada�s goal as the liberation of all of "historic Palestine," a 7.2 percent rise since December 2001, while only 42.8 percent see the goal as "ending the Israeli occupation" in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. "If the two-state solution is not on the table, then people go to extremes," Jarbawi explains.
Palestinian analysts insist that the majority still aspires to the two-state solution. "There is consensus in our house for a viable, independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem," Abdul Hadi argues. "Israel is in crisis over what it wants to be."
Adds Abdul Jawwad: "I know my society profoundly, and it is deeply attached to peace and a two-state compromise."
The suicide bombers, however, seek different achievements. Hamas, says Abdul Jawwad, "converges with Sharon. They want the destruction of the PA, the reoccupation of the West Bank and a bloody struggle." Fatah, he says, acts more out of "frustration" and the desire to take revenge for the assassination of its leaders.
The antidote, he insists, lies in a political settlement. "Today, there are hundreds of people ready to carry out the attacks. The moment there�s a political solution, those who send the suicide bombers won�t find willing volunteers."
The experts don�t expect Israel and the Palestinians to reach that point themselves. "The internal dynamic here in the area is not going to move us ahead," says Jarbawi. "Only outside intervention might. Might."
In the meantime, the suicide bombers give the Palestinian street its only satisfaction. "Israel is Samson. America, the Arab states and Europe don�t do anything. Sharon tells Bush what to do," says Salameh, the advocate of peaceful reconciliation. "Who will give hope to the Palestinians? The only people who can hurt Israel, who can cause it pain, are the suicide bombers. They are heroes in Palestinian eyes. For me, yes, I�m against that. But the reality is stronger than you or me. "
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