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Israel’s secret service agency, the Shabak, arrested Ahlam on September 14, 2001, and charged her with extending logistical support to the Hamas cell responsible for the Sbarro bombing, along with Muhammed Wail Daghlas, another Hamas activist. Using a smuggled cell phone, Daghlas told the television program Nightline that militant groups “have to send a message that Israeli children are not safe if they continue killing [Palestinian] children.”36
At Birzeit University, where Ahlam had been a communications and journalism major, students understood the attack as revenge for the humiliating checkpoints, harsh living conditions, and killing of Palestinian civilians. Sara Helm of the Sunday Times interviewed some of Ahlam’s fellow students at Birzeit after the attack. They suggested to her that, because Ahlam was reporting on all the suffering at the TV station every day, she felt the pain of the occupation more deeply than others. Mia, the gentlest of girls, bright-eyed in denim dungarees and pink T-shirt, said that “you had to understand how Palestinians were made to feel like animals in order to understand their support for a suicide operation. The Israeli military cages them up.” Palestinians feel that Israel has stolen their land. “They have made me feel that when I die, I too want to hurt the person who has hurt me and my family.” And the Jewish children? “Yes, the children too,” said Mia. “Because the children of the Jews will be the soldiers of the future. They are the ones who will kill us.”37
An Egyptian newspaper, Al Masa’a, published an editorial that endorsed the killing of Israeli civilians, including children, during martyrdom operations. The editor explained that he would not question the legitimacy of such operations against Israel because the suicide attacks were a powerful weapon used by the Palestinians against an enemy with no morality or religion, an enemy who has deadly weapons prohibited by international law and is not deterred from using them against the defenseless Palestinian people. “Even if during [a martyrdom operation] civilians or children are killed—the blame does not fall upon the Palestinians, but upon those who forced them to turn to this modus operandi.”38
Many people connect the phenomenon of suicide bombing with the ideas of French sociologist Émile Durkheim and his study of altruistic suicide, in which the person embedded within society is convinced that his or her death is the only possible contribution he or she can make. But in most cases of suicide terrorism, altruism does not readily apply. According to Hamas theologian Dr. Azzam Tamimi (no relation to Ahlam), it is the belief in paradise rather than altruism that plays a key role in martyrdom operations. Nor does the bomber feel guilt for his or her action. By giving his or her own life as part of the sacrifice, the bomber’s martyrdom wipes out the moral wrong of killing civilians. This hardly compares to self-immolating Buddhist monks, hunger strikers, or prisoners of conscience, whose own suffering is intended to make a political statement without harming others. Suicide terror is murder in which the perpetrator justifies his or her action by a theological loophole so that he or she can enter paradise.
According to this loose interpretation of Islamic law, the act of self-sacrifice provides the rationale for the killing of innocents, which otherwise is strictly prohibited by the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH [peace be upon him]). Verse 5:32 of the Qur’an echoes Genesis chapter 4: “If any one slew a person—unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” This justification is widely accepted in Palestine even if it violates both the spirit and letter of orthodox Islamic law.
Umm Anas (her nom de guerre), an eighteen-year-old female Islamic Jihad operative in Gaza interviewed by the BBC, echoes the justifications for killing civilians, including children. For her, all Jews, including the children, have violated Palestinian land as a result of the Occupation. While she acknowledges that children are technically (and according to the Qur’an) civilians, they will one day grow up to be soldiers. For Umm Anas, martyrdom permits the Palestinians to level the playing field. Ahlam concurs. The Israeli side is twice as powerful as the Palestinian side, she says. There is no balance of power between the two, so Palestinians need to defend their lands using any means at their disposal. She considers herself to be a daughter of the Palestinian people defending Palestinian lands. She will use any means necessary.39 This is why terrorist leaders such as the Islamic Jihad’s Abdullah ash-Shami routinely claim that suicide bombing is the only Palestinian option: “We have no bombs, tanks, missiles, planes, or helicopters.”40 Martyrs or human bombs allow the Palestinians to capitalize on their comparative advantage in numbers: in the absence of high-tech weapons or nuclear arms, the Palestinians have many people willing to die for the cause. Umm Anas sums up the trade-off: “Jews are scared when we just throw stones. Imagine what happens when body parts fly at them.”41
Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the current secretary-general and leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, was the first terrorist leader to deploy suicide bombers effectively to leverage an overwhelming military force. The 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks was the deadliest terrorist attack against Americans before September 11, 2001, and helped compel the Americans to leave Lebanon. Asked to explain what goes through the martyr’s mind prior to an operation, and why someone like Umm Anas would consider dying to be a gift from God, Nasrallah employs a metaphor to describe the euphoria felt by the would-be shahid. Martyrdom provides a huge relief, he explains: “Imagine you are in a sauna and it is very hot, but you know that in the next room there is air-conditioning, an armchair, classical music, and a cocktail. So you pass easily into the next room. That is how I would explain martyrdom to a Westerner.”42
For Ahlam, martyrdom is a beautiful thing—not for her, for her accomplice. “If there was a poor man and you gave him a lot of money, that would make him very happy, and you would be happy for giving him the life that he wanted so much. I gave this bomber the life he wanted so much. I was amazed by his enthusiasm for this operation and his eagerness to pass into the next world.”43
Most individuals who plan operations are unlikely ever to volunteer for martyrdom themselves. According to interviews conducted by Tel Aviv University psychologist Ariel Merari, several organizers said that they were reluctant to kill themselves in a martyrdom attack. They explained to him how difficult it would be for them to carry out the operations that they had planned. “If one is destined to organize [suicide attacks] others are destined to perform martyrdom operations. A recurrent theme in the explanations was that their role as organizers was more important than that of the bomber.”44 Yasser, a Hamas organizer, said that he wouldn’t be willing to die himself. Presumably, knowing that you are sending others to make the utmost sacrifice, a sacrifice you would be reluctant to make yourself, must generate psychological distress, unless you are utterly cynical and manipulative.45
If the Palestinians have worked out their own elaborate justifications for killing civilians, so have the Israelis—the logic of oppression and terror again playing itself out. According to Lieutenant-General Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli chief of staff, Israel is at war with an enemy that has no qualms about killing children. That is why Israelis “shoot first and ask questions later.” For Ya’alon, Palestinians need to pay the price for their war.46 Israeli Air Force general Dan Halutz, another former chief of staff, was a key figure behind then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policy of targeted killings of suspected terrorists. Halutz gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he declared that targeted killing was the most important method Israel had at its disposal in its fight against terrorism.47 From the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000 through June 30, 2008, there were more than 521 deaths from Israeli targeted assassinations, including 233 bystanders, 20 women, and 71 children. Entire families were wiped out with the dropping of a bomb, including women, children, the sick, and the elderly.
A July 2002 incident in Gaza showed how lethal targeted assassination
s can be. Halutz ordered an Israeli F-16 to drop a 1,000-kilogram (approximately one-ton) bomb on an apartment block in Gaza City where Salah Shehadeh, the leader of the Izzedine Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing responsible for suicide operations, lived with his wife and children. Ya’alon knew Shehadeh’s family was there. The bomb killed Shehadeh, his wife and young daughter, and sixteen others, of whom fifteen were civilians and nine were children under the age of eleven, including a two-month old baby.48 Two neighboring homes were also destroyed and thirty-two others damaged.
Asked later by an interviewer from Haaretz newspaper whether he felt any remorse about the incident, which was condemned around the world, Halutz answered: “If you insist on wanting to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you. I feel a slight bump to the plane when the bomb releases. A second later it passes. That is what I feel.”49 Israelis celebrated Halutz as a hero, while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon roundly praised the killing of Shehadeh as an unqualified and complete success. Sharon then promoted Halutz to chief of staff.
For Israelis, the problem is that they are not fighting another state with an army, but terrorists who embed themselves among civilians. The terrorists place their children in harm’s way by using civilians as human shields. They attack Israel anticipating that it will respond violently. The Israeli military response kills even more civilians, especially children. The children’s deaths increase the Palestinian public’s outrage against Israel and motivate people to join terrorist organizations and volunteer to be suicide bombers. The deliberate provocation not only ramps up support for the terrorist groups but also makes their propaganda against the enemy resonate in the hearts and minds of every Palestinian.
The Israelis consider the deaths of Palestinian children as “collateral damage.” They have done little to limit the number of unintended victims of their counter-terror policies. Israel is unwilling to take the steps to ensure that children are not killed by accident, especially if this increases the danger posed to its soldiers on the ground. Officially, the country has implemented rules of engagement regarding the use of targeted assassination. The military is supposed to adhere to six iron-clad conditions: “that arrest is otherwise impossible; that targets are strictly combatants; that senior cabinet members approve each attack; that civilian casualties are minimized; that operations are limited to areas not under Israeli control; and that targets are identified as a future threat. Unlike prison sentences, targeted killing cannot be meted out as punishment for past behavior. In 2002, a military panel established that targeting cannot be for revenge, but only for deterrence.”50 The fact that such rules of engagement exist means nothing to the Palestinian civilians bearing the brunt of bombing campaigns. The Palestinian terrorist organizations’ response appears to be to deliberately target Israeli women and children. This in turn outrages Israelis further and ramps up the next counter-terror measure, creating a bloody call-and-response cycle on both sides.
What both sides fail to grasp is how the cycles of violence persist and worsen over time. A demonstrable culture of martyrdom and a longing for death have evolved within Palestinian society. According to Eyad Serraj, a psychiatrist who treats Palestinians suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, at least 25 percent of young people in Gaza aspire to a martyr’s death. Some refuse to go to school because they fear not seeing their parents again because of the possibility that they will be arrested or killed, or will not find their house when they come home, because the Israelis have destroyed it. “In the First Intifada, the danger was limited to the places where soldiers and stone-throwers clashed. Now death comes from the skies and anyone anywhere can be hit. This has created a state of chronic panic.”51
The pattern of violence makes the conflict multigenerational. Children who are brought up in this environment seek death and their parents will not dissuade them from following their dream. Palestinians live in the fear that they can die at any moment from aerial bombardment or a stray bullet. Becoming a bomber might in some ways be empowering, because at least a bomber chooses the time and place of his or her death. When failed female bomber Shefa’a Al Qudsi was asked whether she would discourage her daughter, Diana, from following in her footsteps and becoming a martyr, she said that she would teach Diana that education is the most important thing in life. But since children can be shot coming home from school, the best and the brightest Palestinian children become martyrs, whether or not they want to be. So if Diana wanted to become a “living martyr,” Shefa’a would not stop her.52
Suicide attacks have simultaneously radicalized Israeli viewpoints and hardened their political positions. Israel’s heavy-handed military tactics, checkpoint abuses, targeted killings, and collective punishment are all justified in the name of security. Human rights abuses and the systematic humiliation of Palestinians are either ignored or tolerated by a population consumed by fear. In the end, it is the civilians on both sides of the conflict who pay the price. Within a month of Shehadeh’s targeted assassination, the Izzedine Al Qassam Brigades he once headed perpetrated several more attacks against Israelis, in Safad at Meiroun’s crossroads and near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. This began yet another new cycle of violence with escalation on both sides.
THE WOMEN OF HASHARON PRISON
Ahlam at-Tamimi remains in HaSharon prison, a sprawling, multistory concrete structure surrounded by tall palm trees, razor wire, guard dogs, and towers outside of Tel Aviv in the Plain of Sharon. The prison houses 106 other female security prisoners, 58 of them linked to Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other Islamist-inspired groups, and 48 from the secular movement Fatah. The women range in age from seventeen to thirty. Like Ahlam, many are serving life sentences with no chance of parole. According to Hamas’s leadership, the Israelis are holding around 12,000 prisoners of both sexes, including 400 children (people under the age of eighteen). Other reports claim 360 children, including 200 awaiting trial and another 145 serving various prison terms.53
The women at HaSharon are kept in a virtual labyrinth, behind seven iron doors and gates at the ends of long corridors to which few people are allowed access. To reach the cells, one must climb and descend one flight of stairs after another, up, down, and around, like something out of an M.C. Escher drawing. Ahlam claims that the women of HaSharon have made the prison a beautiful place, an ersatz Garden of Eden. They have painted murals of roses and flowers and babies on the white walls and brought vibrant color to the gray and blue concrete jail.
Ahlam is located in Ward 11 with other Hamasawis (Hamas supporters) and several women from the Islamic Jihad. In some interviews, Ahlam refers to herself in the third person when she describes how “Ahlam brought jihad to the people” or says, “Since Ahlam entered prison, the Palestinians have become acquainted with the hidden aspect of Ahlam’s personality. The idea of jihad and its agenda.”54 She can be extremely curt. When former New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to HaSharon prison in 2007 to talk with failed bombers, Ahlam brushed her aside: “We don’t like America because of the war in Iraq and your support for the Zionists and Jews,” she declared, and abruptly turned away.55 She also monitors what all the other women say and feeds them pre-approved responses during interviews: “Say how many children you have, how they live, how they saw blood and murder,” she tells Kahira Sa’adi, another inmate, during an interview, as she listens to ensure that Hamas propaganda is properly disseminated.
While in prison, Ahlam married her cousin Nizar, who is incarcerated at another secure facility for acts of terrorism. Ahlam herself has become a celebrity. She has starred in documentaries, been the subject of poems, and been heralded in the Palestinian press and international media. Mutawakil Taha, head of the Palestinian Writer’s Union and a former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority, wrote a book honoring her and her husband, Nizar, Ahlam ibn al Nabi, in which he describes the couple as heroes. Two years after publication of the book, on April 7, 2008, al Quds newspaper quoted Taha saying how proud he was of the two priso
ners, Nizar and Ahlam at-Tamimi. In the al Quds interview, Taha explained: “I feel that the prisoners are martyrs in potential, and that we should bond with them without question or accounting. We should bond to the prisoners unconditionally as we bond to the martyrs and the homeland.”56
Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz’s special correspondent for Arab affairs, claims that the lives of female suicide terrorists are no less tragic than those of male suicide bombers, yet the media accords these women more sympathy and treats them with kid gloves.57 In fact, when women perpetrate acts of terrorism, they draw eight times the media attention given to men. Many of the terrorist organizations are aware of this and exploit women accordingly. Some of the Palestinian groups deliberately select more attractive and telegenic operatives precisely for this reason. Looking at a police lineup of female Palestinian suicide bombers (both successful and preempted) you would be struck by how attractive many of them are. The groups are seeking that reaction, followed by the obvious question, What could make such a pretty girl do that? There must be something seriously wrong.
Between 2002 and 2009, ninety-six Palestinian women attempted suicide attacks, though just eight were successful. Most of the women were preempted or caught before their attack could be completed, and a handful changed their minds at the last moment. Most of the attempts were conducted during the height of the Second Intifada, before the Israelis erected the security fence (known by some as the Apartheid Wall) to separate themselves from the Palestinians. According to Israeli counter-terrorism expert Anat Berko, Palestinian women are increasingly involved in all levels of terrorist activity, everything from scouting targets and smuggling guns and explosives to being suicide bombers. Berko claims that now that there is a sufficient number of successful and unsuccessful operatives, a profile of Palestinian female suicide bombers seems to be emerging. “The male suicide bombers tend to be introverts, the women less so. The women are older and better educated than their male counterparts. Whereas the men are usually in their late teens and early twenties with scant education, studies carried out by Shin Bet [the Israeli security agency] on sixty-seven women recruited to become suicide bombers from 2002 to 2005 found that 33 percent were college graduates and an additional 39 percent had finished high school.”58