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Reem al-Reyashi was involved in a love triangle between two Hamas men, and paid with her life.
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| By israelinsider staff January 19, 2004 |
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Female bomber Reem al-Reyashi, who blew herself up last Wednesday at the Erez Crossing, killing four Israelis, was induced to carry out the suicide attack as a punishment for cheating on her husband.
A few hours after the suicide attack the Hamas released the videotape of the 22 year old mother of two. In her last statement, with a beatific smile on her face, a rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other, al-Reyashi proudly proclaimed that "I always wanted to be the first woman who sacrifices her life for Allah. My joy will be complete when my body parts fly in all directions." She said her fondest wish was to "knock on the doors of heaven with Zionist skulls."
However, information regarding the circumstances that led al-Reyashi to carry out her attack, based on Israeli security sources originally disclosed by Yediot Ahronot, suggests a very different motivation: not anti-Zionist motivation or Islamic fervor but a fatal love triangle. She apparently became involved in an extramarital affair with a Hamas man. When her husband, a wealthy owner of a battery factory, found out, he reached an arrangement to have her sent on the suicide mission. She was compelled to sacrifice herself to clear her name and the "honor" of her family. The husband denied the charge, saying it was a fabrication of Israeli security services to defame Arab women and Islam.
IDF sources say that Al-Reyashi's husband, who also had close ties with Hamas even though his battery manufacturing company exported heavily to Israel, not only knew about his wife's plans in advance but encouraged her to carry out the attack, even though this would mean he would be left to raise their two small children alone.
The man who recruited and trained her to carry out the attack, and equipped her with the explosive belt, was none other than her lover. The British Sunday Times reports that her husband drove his wife to the Erez Crossing, scene of the attack.
Although Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin praised al-Reyashi soon after the attack, and issued an edict permitting female suicide bombers, it appears that Hamas remains ambivalent about the use of women, especially married mothers, in terror attacks.
Previously Hamas leaders rejected requests of women to carry out such attacks. In some cases, they referred female bomber volunteers to other organizations, especially Islamic Jihad and Fatah-Tanzim. Some figures in the Islamic organization who have spoken out on the subject recently expressed support only for using of women who have desecrated rules of "family honor."
Hamas apparently now condones the use of women in terror strikes only in two special circumstances: when a female can carry out the assignment more effectively, since she is likely to cause less suspicion, or when she has transgressed moral norms.
In the case of al-Reyashi, she met both conditions. A woman's self-sacrifice atones for the moral stain she has brought upon her family, even if, as in the case al-Reyashi, the violation was having an extramarital affair with a member of Hamas. Today Sheikh Yassin said that al-Reyashi would lead a generation of female suicide bombers from his organization.
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