Reuters

Jailed Palestinian Woman Bomber Longs for 'Martrydom'

Date: Sun Mar 21, 2004

By Megan Goldin

SHARON PRISON, Israel (Reuters) - From behind the bars of her bleak high-security cell at Israel's Sharon Prison, Obedia Khalil longs for death -- her own and those of as many Israelis as she can take with her.

"If I stay here for years, for even 50 years, and I have an opportunity to carry out a suicide bombing, then I would do it," said 27-year-old Khalil with a smile. "For my land I have patience."

The Palestinian former nurse has served half of a five-year jail term for planning to carry out a suicide bombing at Tel Aviv's bus station.

Like her fellow inmates, Khalil said she was motivated by revenge -- for Israel's killing of her fiance in a West Bank army raid four days before her wedding and the deaths of her brother and cousin, both of whom carried out suicide bombings.

Khalil is one of about 25 Palestinian women convicted by Israel for planning suicide attacks. Some of the women were captured with explosives strapped to their bodies.

Seven Palestinian women have carried out suicide bombings since 2002. There have been more than 100 such attacks in Israel since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

Khalil's devout Islamic dress and her conversation peppered with Koranic phrases give little indication of what her life was like before she approached the Islamic Jihad militant group and volunteered to carry out a suicide bombing.

"Then there weren't female "martyrs" (bombers) at all," she said. "I wanted to open the way."

She decided to strike shortly after her brother carried out a suicide bombing at the Tel Aviv bus station in which scores were wounded but no one killed.

"I asked to do it in the same place where my brother carried out the bombing," Khalil said.

Israeli troops apprehended her after she was fitted for her bomb belt but before she could launch her attack.

"I wore it," Khalil said softly, her face breaking into a gentle smile of remembrance. "It felt wonderful. Really good."

TROUBLED LIVES

Researchers say vengeance is not the deep-seated reason that drives Palestinian women to volunteer to die.

"Perhaps one or two have nationalist motives," said Palestinian psychiatrist Iyyad Sarraj. "(But) when you look back you find there are certain problems in their history."

The women bombers, he said, frequently have troubled lives in a traditional Palestinian society where females are expected to conform to strict rules of behavior, especially with the opposite sex, or risk being ostracized.

Israeli criminologist Anat Barko, who has studied dozens of jailed would-be bombers as part of research into the phenomenon, said the women are usually outcasts seeking to be idealized in a society where suicide bombers, or "martyrs," are folk heroes.

"There are lots of places in the world where there are ethnic conflicts, nationalist conflicts ... and people don't blow themselves up," said Barko.

But she said suicide bombers have become role models for Palestinian youth. Sarraj said 36 percent of 12-year-old boys and 17 percent of Palestinian girls want to die as a "martyr."

"It is an epidemic phenomenon," Barko said. "There are songs about them...They see their posters on the streets. They hear about them in the media and in the mosques."

Sarraj blamed Israel. "The systematic policy of the occupation has resulted in ... generations of people who are going to kill themselves and become martyrs," he said.

OUTCASTS, MARRIONETTES

Barko, who has also profiled jailed militants who recruited suicide bombers, said the militant groups sought women in crisis who hoped to redeem themselves.

"The female suicide bombers are like marionettes. Somebody can pull the wires and manipulate them," Barko said. Khalil wiles away the monotony of her grim existence in Cell Block 12 reading the Koran, praying and talking politics with other inmates, mostly about hardships under occupation.

At first glance she does not appear to fit the experts' profile of a female suicide bomber -- an outcast, a misfit, a woman possibly tainted by rumors of illicit sex.

But according to Israeli court records, when she was in her early 20s Khalil was arrested and served an 18-month sentence for robbing an Arab man in East Jerusalem.

She told the court he had once tried to rape her and she wanted to take his identity card so he could be punished.

Barko recounts another case, involving a woman who said she had volunteered to be a suicide bomber to get back at her father who refused to allow her to marry because of a dowry dispute with her fiance's family.

Outlining the profile of female bombers, Barko said many had bad reputations over rumors they'd had "illicit" relations with men. Some were rebels who resented the rigid rules of their society and felt smothered by their families.

A few had suicidal tendencies. Some were at an age where marriage prospects were slim.

Khalil and fellow inmates make no mention of social problems when they say they wanted to kill Israelis to avenge Palestinian deaths by the army and Israel's occupation, which she says will end only when Israel is destroyed.

Khalil admits to suffering from jealous pangs when she hears of another suicide bomb attack that has killed Israelis.

"I am pleased," she said from the caged prison yard. "I am only sorry that I was not the one who carried out the attack."

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

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