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Reem al-Rayishi, 21, mother of two, murderer of four
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| By israelinsider staff January 16, 2004 |
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For the first time, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has approved the use of women as suicide bombers. The Palestinian Authority refused to issue a routine condemnation the bombing at the entrance to the Erez Industrial Zone which killed four Israelis.
Both Hamas and Yasser Arafat's Fatah group took credit for the killing, carried out by Reem al-Raiyshi, a 21 year old mother of two from Gaza. Israeli security officials said targeted killings of Hamas leaders would resume.
According to Israeli Channel 2 television, al-Rayashi, approached Hamas several times with the request to be a suicide bomber. "She practically begged, the Arab affairs correspondent reported. The leadership of the strictly Islamic terror group repeatedly rejected her pleas, until Yassin himself intervened.
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"It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists."
Reem al-Rayishi, 21, the suicide bomber who killed four Israelis at Erez
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Hamas has previously opposed the use of female suicide bombings on ideological and religious grounds, although the competing Islamic Jihad organization had been using lady bombers against Israeli civilian targets for at least two years.
However, when Hamas planners brought the proposal to bomb the Erez crossing into the joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial zone, which provides employment for thousands of Palestinians daily, the Hamas leadership adopted the plan, which took advantage of the bomber's gender to penetrate further into the Israeli security inspection area.
Sheikh Yassin reportedly personally gave his blessing for al-Rayashi to be used as a bomber, and within hours of the attack issued a religious edict justifying the continuation of suicide bombing without gender discimination. "Jihad is the duty of men and women," he said. Yassin told reporters that "for the first time, Hamas used a female fighter and not a male fighter. It is a new development in resistance against the enemy.... Resistance will escalate against this enemy until they leave our land and homeland."
Al-Rayashi said in a taped video, which showed her in the traditional pose with a Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, that it was her lifelong dream to become a suicide bomber. "I want to be the first woman to carry out a martyr attack," she said. She added: "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists."
"She is not going to be the last [female attacker] because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said.
"It is not enough to call her a hero. Calling her hero does not give the whole truth. This woman abandoned her husband and children to win paradise," Zahar said in a eulogy at a funeral for al-Rayashi.
However, Debkafile quotes Palestinian sources as suggesting a more prosaic reason for the lady bomber's decision to self-detonate: Al-Rayashi's husband Ziad Awad was not paying enough attention to her. "Awad, after three-and-a-half years of marriage, wanted to get rid of his wife and encouraged her to set off on her mission of no-return.... [She] more than once confided to him her wish to martyr herself and go to heaven -- not so much because she courted death but rather because she secretly hoped her husband would beg her not to leave him and their two small children aged three and one-and-a-half."
Evidently she miscalculated. Awad, Debkafile quotes Palestinian sources as saying, "actively encouraged her to go ahead with her plan, assuring her that God wanted her in heaven where they would later be reunited. Meanwhile, he would look after the children." That is what he reportedly told those who came to offer condolences at the mourners' tent at their home in southern Gaza. "He confessed he was only surprised that his wife had embarked on her sacred mission so soon."
AP quoted an Israeli security official as saying that, with the resumption of Hamas backing for suicide bombings, targeted killings of Hamas officials would resume.
PA blames Gaza attack on Israel
Breaking from the traditional routine condemnation of suicide attacks on Israelis, the Palestinian Authority cast all blame for the Erez bombing on Israel. "Israel bears sole responsibility for what has happened as it continues the occupation, construction of the wall (Israel's West Bank separation barrier), the closures and the escalation," Arafat's chief adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
He called on the international community and the UN Security Council to "make Israel stop its aggressions and force a halt to construction of the wall and a withdrawal from the Palestinian towns." Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurie said the "permanent tension and the closures ... lead to an escalation of violence and counter-violence."
After the suicide bombing destroyed the crossing point, Israel shut down the Erez crossing and the adjacent industrial park, where some 6,000 Palestinians go to work daily. The closure was expected to last until Sunday according to Israeli security officials.
Some Palestinian workers, although unwilling to directly criticize Hamas, questioned the wisdom of Wednesday's attack, which prevented thousands from crossing into Israel for much-needed work. "I think we have the right to fight to end the occupation, but at the same time we have to think 100 times before any act," Fawaz Radwan, 42, told the Associated Press. Radwan works in a factory near the Israeli town of Ashkelon and was unable to cross the border as a result of the bombing.
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