Bombshell (19 page)

The twenty-one-year-old Al Bis had used a special medical entry visa at the heavily fortified Erez Crossing (the main transit point between Israel and Gaza) on her way to blow up Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, where she had been treated for her second- and third-degree burns. It is difficult to fathom why she would attack the very doctors and nurses who had cared for her for six months. At
one point, she told foreign journalists that the explosives had been planted on her without her knowledge and that she never really wanted to become a suicide bomber. Her father, Samir, agreed that his daughter had to have been coerced to carry out the mission. Although he remained in a state of shock after her arrest on June 6, 2005, he refused to believe that his daughter would blow herself up willingly. Al Bis's cousin, Wael, acts as the family spokesperson. He claims that Samir still believes that Al Bis was exploited by someone because of her injuries and fragile mental state. Samir says that it is not fair “that the whole Palestinian population should be punished for what she has tried to do. The Palestinians don't have to pay for her actions.”
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All of these protestations of innocence, however, contradict what Al Bis herself said after she was arrested. In a press conference organized by the Israeli authorities on June 21, Al Bis, looking casual in flowery red flip-flops, a gray tracksuit, and a white cotton shirt, announced to the world that she did not regret what she had done and stressed that her decision to become a martyr had had nothing to do with her burns. She screamed at the reporters:

My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death. I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated … I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews … yes, even babies! You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?
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However, at the same press conference Al Bis begged for mercy because she did not actually kill anyone. The claim she sometimes makes, that she was forced to become a suicide bomber, is contradicted by videotapes from Israeli security cameras, which show her trying to penetrate two sets of metal barriers at the Erez checkpoint. As she waddled toward the metal turnstiles, the Israeli guards
commanded her to stop. There was something wrong with the way she carried herself and her bulky clothing did not suit the hot June afternoon. Through the loudspeaker, the guards demanded that Al Bis take off her outer garments. While the surveillance cameras recorded her every move, she began to slowly disrobe, removing her black headscarf, gown, black button-down shirt, and various other pieces of clothing until she was left with only beige chinos and a white T-shirt. Al Bis visibly flinched as she tried to detonate the twenty-pound explosive device hidden inside her pants. When there was no explosion, she repeatedly pushed the plunger in her pocket. She started to pace and scream in frustration like a caged animal and pulled out the detonator to check the wiring. The surveillance cameras record her screams and her hands clawing at her face and neck. The images capture her horror at the realization that the mission has failed.

It was extremely difficult for Al Bis's mother to watch the surveillance tapes of her daughter's failed operation. However, she agrees with the statements Al Bis made after her arrest, in which she claimed that it had been her dream since she was a little girl to be a martyr.
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Leftist Israeli journalist Amira Hass was highly critical of what she saw as the financial and material incentives for dispatchers to exploit weak and vulnerable women such as Wafa Al Bis. Many of the Palestinian old guard in Israeli jails were also horrified by the terrorist organizations' indecent exploitation of vulnerable people, including women, who are considered defective by societal norms. Because of her physical deformity, Al Bis was not going to fetch a good bride price and had no value on the marriage market. It was thus easy to incite her to join the terrorists. She might also have been persuaded that by becoming a martyr she could enter paradise a new woman, without all her scars and burns. The bastardized message they gave her was that she would be miraculously
transformed in heaven into a beautiful girl. Her burns would be healed and she would be more attractive in death than she had ever been in life. The recruiters often tell women that in paradise they will be queens. No matter how old or grotesque they may be in this world, they will become the fairest of the seventy-two virgins that await each jihad warrior in the next.
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For Al Bis, this might have seemed like her best chance of feeling normal again.

In most cases, it is difficult to ascertain whether there has been real coercion or whether such pleas are part of a bid for merciful treatment. There is a huge incentive for failed bombers to lie and declare that they were coerced, hoping that the justice system will moderate their sentences accordingly. Israel's judicial policy does not factor in regret, even for bombers who change their minds at the last minute and refuse to carry out their mission. As a matter of policy, most bombers get at least one life sentence, even if they were preempted and no one died. If there is “blood on their hands,” a term that the Israelis use for bombers or those who aided them in a successful bombing in which Israelis have died, they will often get multiple life sentences with years added on for good measure.

AHLAM

If misconceptions about Palestinian female bombers have proliferated, this is in part due to Barbara Victor's depictions of them in her 2003 book
Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers
. According to Victor, Ahlam at-Tamimi (whom she refers to as Zina in the book) had a history of problems at home and at school. Victor writes: “Beginning when she was an adolescent Zina rebelled. She refused to wear the hijab and the
jilbab
(traditional modest Islamic clothing) and told her family of her intentions to become an international journalist and live far from home.”
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Victor writes that the relationship with her family was irreparably damaged when she refused to marry the man whom
her family had chosen for her.
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Zina (Ahlam) was pressured by her family to become a suicide bomber to redeem the family's honor after becoming pregnant out of wedlock by an Egyptian boyfriend she met at school in Jordan. They beat her to discover the identity of the father, and she had a baby in April 2001 in Jordan.

But this was not the case. Ahlam was politically mobilized to engage in violence against the Israeli occupation, not because she had had a child out of wedlock but because she had been radicalized and politicized by her activism in school. She certainly did not have a child four months before the attack (and two months prior to placing the explosive beer can in the market). It is clear from her newsreel that this was not a woman who had just given birth. Besides the fact that it is highly unlikely that a devout Muslim woman would admit such personal things to a foreign journalist, Victor's version implies that Ahlam was in two places (Jordan and Palestine) at the same time. Ahlam left Jordan for Ramallah back in 1998, three years before the alleged pregnancy, although Victor claims she arrived in Ramallah only one month before placing the explosive beer can at the co-op supermarket.
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But Ahlam was a media personality on TV at that time, so there is a public record showing that she was actually in Palestine.

Like some researchers, Victor argues that all the Palestinian women involved in terrorism are attempting to right a previous wrong. The families of the first four Palestinian female bombers Victor interviewed claimed that their daughters had some personal secret or shame that becoming a martyr would fix. For Victor, women terrorists all require an act to clean the slate and allow them to reinvent themselves from a dishonorable existence to one that will be lauded by their community. While this set of conditions might apply to some bombers, not every female terrorist was mobilized because of a shameful event in her past, just as not every woman with a shameful event in her past is mobilized to become a terrorist.

In a 2006 interview with Israeli journalist Raanan Ben Zur, Ahlam explained that she would never recognize Israel's existence. She would only consider discussion after Israel recognized that Palestine was Islamic land. She offers no personal reasons for her political engagement. After two years of trials, she was sentenced in October 2003 to 16 life sentences with an additional 15 years, for a total of 320 years. In HaSharon prison, where she sat for the interview, Ahlam displayed little emotion or regret. Does she feel remorse? Ahlam says, no, of course not. She does not regret her actions and no Palestinian prisoner would because they are defending themselves, so they have no regrets. “And why should we?” she asks. “Should we regret defending ourselves? Should we feel regret that Israel murdered one of ours and we murdered one of theirs?”
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Ahlam does not regret the deaths of all the children and feels that Israelis “should have returned to Poland, Russia, or the United States, to the countries their parents came from.”
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Talking to Ahlam is chilling. Her case provides a classic example of Hamas's moral bankruptcy. When asked whether she was aware of the presence of women and children at the pizzeria, Ahlam says yes, she knew. Did she know how many children were killed? She says, “I think there were … three, maybe. I think three children were killed in this action.” She is told simply, eight. “Eight,” she repeats thoughtfully, “Eight.” A smile spreads across her lovely face; she shrugs and her eyes gleam. But this scene is to be repeated over and over again as Ahlam, in every interview, pretends to not actually know the number of people she helped kill. It's an act, a show for the media. Terrorism would be nothing without the media attention and Ahlam relishes her fame.

Ahlam claims to have planned and orchestrated the Sbarro pizzeria attack. If she is correct, she is the exception to the rule. Most women involved in terrorist organizations are not leaders. Even when they are given a high profile in an organization's publicity,
the women rarely play more than a marginal role, either numerically or in organizational terms. Women are sacrificial lambs in places like Turkey, where women comprised 40 percent of all suicide bombers in the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), Sri Lanka, where women exceeded 25 percent of bombers in the LTTE, Chechnya, where they constitute 43 percent. They do not plan the operations they take part in. Often they have little say as to their targets, the timing, or the way in which the operations are conducted. Most are not even given thorough training. The mission itself requires little to no expertise or investment of either time or money. As one observer has noted: “Indeed, for many of the women, the contribution of a suicide mission to their national or religious struggle is precisely that: employment in the male-dominated domain of suicide bombing.”
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Palestinian organizations present a different picture. Palestinian women are acknowledged as the equal of men in the steadfastness of their opposition to the Occupation. This form of resistance, called
Sumud
, is a way for Palestinians to convey to their enemies that their opposition is not ephemeral.
Sumud
means outlasting the Israelis and eventually prevailing. The importance of women has become especially notable since Al ‘Aqsa Intifada. The increasing number of female bombers shows how proactive Palestinian women really are. Ahlam at-Tamimi is just one of a number of women who have become symbols of the new Palestinian woman and role models for other women and girls.

Women like suicide bomber Shefa'a Al Qudsi believe Palestinian women can do something more significant in the struggle. “Till Wafa, women had just helped jihad by making food. I thought: We can do more … My body would be a bridge to a better future that my daughter would walk over. Yes, I would die, but I would help give her a better life, a future without occupation. I was placing her fate in Allah's hands.”
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Palestinian political prisoners are occasionally made to mix with HaSharon prison's general population. When they do, Israeli criminals hurl insults at the political prisoners and beat them if they can. The guards do nothing to intervene. The women suffer from psychological problems, but are denied access to a psychiatrist. In addition, most women prisoners have skin diseases and other conditions because of the presence of vermin in the prison and neglect by the authorities. Ahlam at-Tamimi suffers from kidney stones and pain in her joints but Israeli authorities and the prison guards refuse to allow her medical treatment.
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She resorted to a hunger strike in order to return to HaSharon after she was transferred to the Moscobiya prison. The strike made her medical condition worse, though Israeli authorities finally allowed her access to care.

Human rights groups have lodged multiple complaints with the World Organization Against Torture (WOAT), saying that the female prisoners in Israel are being abused and sexually humiliated while in custody. According to the complaint, prison conditions do not meet the minimum required standards and the women are allegedly subjected to humiliating body searches in front of male guards. In a society in which modesty is highly prized and immodesty can be punished by death as part of the honor code, forcing Palestinian women to take off all of their clothes is the ultimate humiliation.

The report to the WOAT describes a typical search of a female prisoner, who happens to be one of Ahlam at-Tamimi's prison mates. As Amneh reached her cell, she was asked to undress in front of Sireet and Asher and two other male guards behind the door. Because of the presence of men, she refused. She was then taken into a cell with five male and female guards. The guards beat her and sprayed her with large quantities of tear gas. She fell to the ground and the guards continued to beat her, inflicting injuries to
her head and nose. They tied her feet and hands behind her back. Sireet strip-searched Amneh in the presence of the men, lifting her blouse and releasing her trouser buttons and inspecting her while she was lying on the ground. Amneh shouted and yelled all the while. After the episode, Amneh was put in solitary confinement for three weeks.
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In Palestine, under the strict Islamic honor code, this type of sexual humiliation would ruin a woman's reputation and chances of getting married. While in this instance the Israelis apparently stopped short of actually raping their prisoner, this kind of attack easily inspires the women who are victimized to seek revenge against their tormentors.