Recruitment Of Suicide Bombers Sparks Debate Among More Palestinians

by Ferry Biedermann

(IPS) NABLUS -- Abir al-Masri looks pale and drawn. She lost two of her four sons earlier this month. The first, Amjad, was killed by an Israeli bullet, and the second, Iyad, died a week later in a botched suicide attack.

In her simple apartment near the centre of Nablus, a city of some 130,000 people in the northern West Bank, Abir speaks of the loss of her sons. Her husband Bilal and another son Islam comfort her.

"Iyad was in a state of shock after his brother was killed -- he was traumatised," Abir says vehemently. "They should never have allowed him to carry out an attack in his condition."

His 15-year-old brother Amjad was killed while he was playing on a roof opposite his home. His mother had called him for breakfast when he was struck by an Israeli bullet. The Israeli army says there were clashes at the time and people were throwing stones at soldiers from rooftops. The family says it was quiet when Amjad was shot.

In the suicide mission he took on, the 17-year-old Iyad lost his way, and his belt packed with explosives blew up in a field, local reports say.

Many share Abir's anger over the death. This and cases of other suicide bombers have spurred a new debate among Palestinians on recruitment by militant groups.

The debate has led even to questioning what one commentator calls "the culture of death." The debate is not so much about the morality of attacking civilian targets, it is about the effects this has within Palestinian society.

Many people, including Bilal al-Masri, point at Islamic Jihad for recruiting Iyad. The group claimed the failed attack but did not put up the traditional poster for someone seen as a martyr.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group related to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, put up a poster later to honour Iyad. The sky-blue poster shows Iyad with an M-16 rifle amid smaller portraits of his younger brother Amjad and his cousin Mohammed Qais al-Masri.

Mohammed Qais al-Masri was killed by an Israeli bullet during Amjad's funeral. "Iyad was standing right behind Mohammed," says Bilal. "They were both pall-bearers for Amjad, and Iyad was covered in Mohammed's blood." Amjad was killed in Israeli firing earlier.

Bilal, an out of work accountant, is adamant that Iyad would never have wanted to carry out a suicide attack had he been given time to cool off. "He was ambitious, he had big plans," says Bilal. "He wanted to get married and build a big house, even though he was young."

Islamic Jihad does not accept that it sent Iyad to his death. But Sheik Yousef Aref, a prominent Jihad leader in Nablus, acknowledges that recruiting Iyad was a mistake.

"There is a lot of pressure on the military wing and it is very decentralized," he says. "The decision to recruit Iyad al-Masri was taken by a small cell, not by the central leadership. The boy in question put a lot of pressure on these people to be accepted for a mission."

Islamic Jihad has some sort of recruitment rules. An only son or a son in a family that has lost someone in an attack is not accepted, Aref says. "There should be another rule, that nobody can be recruited soon after he has lost a relative."

The attacks are provoked by the occupation and religious faith is the impetus behind them, says Aref. But in most cases people have a revenge motive apart form nationalist or other reasons, he says.

Iyad became very religious in the days after Amjad's death. "Before that he was normal, he would fast during Ramadan, pray on Fridays, but afterwards he started reading the Koran all the time," says Abir. "I thought it was good for him to concentrate on religion."

But Bilal says Iyad became so religious that it became worrying. "On the night before he went on his mission, he listened to a tape of the Koran and he was also reading. At two in the morning I went to him and asked him to turn it off because we couldn't sleep."

Neither Bilal nor Abir suspected that Iyad could be planning an attack. He had told them he was going back to his construction job the next day.

Saad al-Masri, a cousin who worked with him, says he knew Iyad had been thinking about volunteering for an attack. "But then the day before he seemed much better and he told us that he was coming back to work, so we stopped worrying," Saad says. "The next morning we waited for him but he never showed up."

Bilal says he and the rest of the family were the last to know about the attack. "Everybody was to afraid to tell us, it was too much." He says he came to know from people coming into a pharmacy where he sometimes helps out.

"Then I went home but I could not bring myself to tell my wife," he says. "She only found out when people came to pay their respects."

Iyad's death caused an uproar in Nablus. Some politicians are now worried about the effect such cases can have on morale.

Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Palestinian National Council and close to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades urges more caution in recruiting suicide bombers.

"The leaders should send a message to the groups that they should not carry out attacks that harm the image of the armed struggle or decrease support for the resistance," he warns.

A columnist in the Al-Ayyam newspaper, which reflects thinking in the Palestinian Authority, went further. "If society does not have the courage to speak out on this issue, we could soon see 10-year-olds and pregnant women blowing themselves up," Hasan Badtil wrote last week.

The extended Al-Masri family is influential, and has demanded an official investigation by the Palestinian Authority into the recruitment of Iyad.

Despite his disapproval of the recruitment of Iyad, Nasrallah has a more cynical take on the situation. "Many people have carried out attacks as revenge for losing a relative," he says. "If Iyad had been successful and if he had killed lots of Israelis, he would be a hero and we wouldn't be having this debate."