'My dream was to be a martyr'

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

'My dream was to be a martyr'

By CAROLYNNE WHEELER

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Ramallah — The few seconds of video footage captured at Gaza's Erez crossing sent chills down the spines of Israeli television viewers: A young woman with her hair in a ponytail, her arms and neck grotesquely disfigured with burns, grimacing and crying before revealing to soldiers her deadly burden.

Wafa al-Biss, 21, had been travelling regularly for weeks to the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on medical permits. A child of Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp, known as a hotbed of militancy, and a student at Al-Quds Open University, she was being treated for the deep burns she received when a gas canister in her family's kitchen exploded in December.

Ms. al-Biss, who had planned to arrive at the Soroka Medical Centre on Monday, was instructed to detonate a 10-kilogram load of explosives sewn into her underwear, taking with her fellow patients and, quite likely, the doctors and nurses who had cared for her.

"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she told reporters after Israel's Shin Bet security service took the rare step of allowing a few reporters to interview her on camera.

Deemed suspicious, she was stopped at the checkpoint that morning, ordered into a concrete room and told to strip. Video stills show her fumbling with the explosives as if to detonate them, then with her mouth open in a silent, frustrated cry at her failure.

Ms. al-Biss later told interrogators she was given the explosive-laden garment on Monday morning by operatives from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, who instructed her to blow herself up in a noisy, crowded place in the hospital.

"Don't think that because of how I look I wanted to carry out an attack . . . since I was a little girl, I wanted to carry out an attack," she is reported to have said by Israeli television. "I didn't kill anyone. Do you think they will forgive me? I hope they show me some mercy."

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, she said the explosives had been planted on her in a Gaza hospital and that she hadn't planned an attack.

Israeli officials warned that the already arduous process for precious medical permits that allows sick Palestinians in Gaza to seek treatment in Israeli hospitals will now have to be reviewed.

But Ms. al-Biss's teary eyes on camera captured widespread media attention this week for another reason: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is already facing heavy controversy for his decision to withdraw Israeli troops and about 8,000 settlers from Gaza this summer. Opponents of disengagement say it will open the door to more attacks from Palestinian militant groups based in Gaza.

"If this woman had had her way in Erez -- just imagine her blowing herself up in a hospital. Thank God it was averted," said Uri Dromi, a political analyst and director of the Israel Democracy Institute. "Israel is pulling out of Gaza, so why do you have to do this terrorist attack? What do you want?"


What they want of course is to kill Jews. That's what many followers of islam want. Kill Jews. Kill Christians. Kill Hindus, Buddhists, Janeites and Scientologists. Religion of peace? Hardly...