Role of Muslim women in violent resistance. Middle Eastern women have only recently entered what has traditionally been seen as the male arena of suicide bombing. This is a result, in part, of Islamic resistance movements’ successful recruitment efforts that have developed in the wake of the end of Europe’s colonial dominance during the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, it is necessary to consider Israel’s position in the Middle East to understand the expanded role of women in combat, especially as suicide bombers.
Unlike the Free Officers, the Palestine Liberation Organization, or the Kurdish People’s Union, which are secular-nationalist movements, many groups associated with post—World War II Islamic resurgence are religiously based in both ideology and in mass support. They have been spurred on by the success of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and are usually attempting to remove non-Islamic governments or occupying powers to establish Islamic governments of their own design.
Even non-Islamic-based groups, such as al-Fatah and the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, have publicly embraced Islamic phraseology. In fact, many Islamic groups work within the social, political, and economic structures established by non-Islamic groups (Victor 2003, 64). Women have recently become active in many of the Islamic resistance movements such as Hezballah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad as well as Islamic-inspired groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade.
On January 27, 2002, Wafa Idris did not show up for work at the local Red Crescent office. Instead she met with members of the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade who had built a bomb for her to carry into an Israeli shoe store later that day. The twenty-six-year-old college graduate and refugee camp resident blew herself up in a Jerusalem shopping center, killing one Israeli citizen and wounding over 130 others. Idris was the forty-seventh suicide bomber and the first woman to blow herself up in the name of defending her country (Victor 2003, 20).
During the second Intifada (al-Aqsa Intifada), which began in September 2002 (the first Intifada lasted from 1987 to August 1993), Hamas leadership issued statements calling on all women to be properly covered when they went out in public and to refrain from taking part in violent demonstrations. The majority of Palestinian women rejected the call for more modest dress, but some did adhere to the call. These women also began to participate in individual, sporadic, and uncoordinated attacks against Israeli soldiers, known as jihad fardi (personal initiative attacks). A Palestinian woman wearing the jihab, for example, would be able to hide a knife or a gun and either use it herself or pass it along to a man. According to Mohammad Daha-lan, the onetime head of Yasser Arafat’s West
Bank security force, "the leaders of the various factions also realized that as long as women were dressed in the proper attire, they could be used more effectively to penetrate security and transport weapons" (Victor 2003, 14).
Although it is difficult to measure, women in general sympathized with Hamas (Abdo 1999, 49). One woman in particular, Darine Abu Aisha, was such a staunch supporter that she blew herself up at the Maccabim checkpoint near Jerusalem on February 27, 2002, under the auspices of that Islamic movement (Victor 2003, 97). According to the videotape she left behind, she became a suicide bomber in part because of the abuse she had witnessed and experienced under Israeli occupation. For example, when she acted as an interpreter at a checkpoint for another woman who was trying to take her dying baby to the hospital, the Israeli soldiers would not allow the mother to pass until Abu Aisha kissed a man in the crowd (Victor 2003, 107). The same day that Abu Aisha took her own life, the religious leader of Hamas, Sheik Yassin, issued a decree permitting women to participate in suicide attacks and stated that those who did would receive special blessings in heaven (Victor 2003, 110).
Women have always been targeted for recruitment into the various Palestinian resistance movements (Sayigh 1996, 148). The roles that women performed in organizations such as the PLO had traditionally been limited to support, however, such as marching in protest parades or running orphanages or aid stations. According to the Palestinian leader Hanan Ashwari, women’s inequality in Arab society is directly linked to the failure of liberation movements. A Palestinian female social worker said she could "feel guilty if [she] asked for more rights as a woman at a time like this [under Israeli occupation]" (Sayigh 1985, 191). This could help to explain the interest, active roles, and the development of women suicide bombers in some Islamic movements.
Whatever the reasons or justifications, many Palestinian schoolgirls seem more than merely willing to commit suicide and murder to further the Palestinian cause. For example, when a group of six-year-old girls at a Jabaliya refugee camp school were asked who wanted to be martyrs, every girl raised her hand. One schoolgirl said if she became a martyr, she would be given everything she wanted in heaven. Another said she was willing to become a suicide bomber "to kill the Jewish . . . and to live near our God," while a third child believed she would win immortality: "We never die. The Jewish die but we live forever" (Victor 2003, 185). She was alluding to the fact that posters of suicide bombers hang near mosques, at marketplaces, and throughout the streets of refugee camps. Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad host summer camps in Gaza where children are taught verses from the Koran that glorify martyrdom. Armed with plastic guns and explosives, the children and adults practice suicide bomb attacks (Victor 2003, 186).
In 2003, Tuha Aziz, a twelve-year-old girl, said that she was willing and even training to become a female suicide bomber. According to Aziz, her parents knew of their daughter’s goal and even supported it. "They are proud of us all because they know it is the only way to conquer the Jews and have a homeland" (Victor 2003, 189). If Tuha makes it to fifteen, she can join the Women for Wafa Idris Martyr’s Brigade, whose volunteers hope that their names will live on forever in songs and poems if they are able to become suicide bombers like their idol, Wafa Idris (Victor 2003, 191).
The women who join Islamic-based resistance movements have much in common. First, they all have at least some college education. Second, they grew up in one of the refugee camps. Third, they have at least one family member abused (usually to death) by the established power authority. Fourth, they usually believe that the established, nonreligious nationalist organizations (such as the PLO) have failed to secure a better life for the people.
