Posted on 06/29/2002 5:13:09 PM PDT by Pokey78
Philip Sherwell in Bethlehem hears a mother's anguish on learning that the Palestinian uprising's youngest suicide bomber was bullied into his 'martyrdom' by terrorist commanders.
Fathiyeh Budeir was devastated. The mother of eight sat on the verandah of her house in Bethlehem and held her head in despair after being told of the final moments of her son Issa, the youngest suicide bomber in the 21-month Palestinian uprising.
She already knew that the 16-year-old schoolboy had blown himself and two Israelis apart outside a cafe near Tel Aviv five weeks ago. Last week, to add to her anguish, she discovered that he had been bullied into committing the atrocity by his terrorist masterminds after he wavered at the last minute.
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"He was too young to understand these things. He was just a boy," said Mrs Budeir. "If I had known these people were sending him to Tel Aviv to conduct this operation, I would have done anything to stop it. I would have locked him in his room.
"My life has collapsed. I had dreamed of seeing my beloved son grow up, go to university, find a wife, have his own children. Now that hope has gone for ever. I feel sick; I feel empty. I will have this bitterness inside me for the rest of my life."
Issa and a female would-be suicide bomber, Arin Ahmed, were driven to the town of Rishon Lezion on May 21 by a minder from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a radical offshoot of the Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
Issa was to walk into a plaza lined with cafes and open-air backgammon tables and detonate a bag packed with 35kg of explosives and nails.
Arin's orders were to wait on the other side of the street where survivors from the first blast would take refuge and then detonate her bomb when she was surrounded by a crowd.
The plan started to unravel when Arin, a 20-year-old computer science student from Bethlehem University, declared that she was no longer willing to go through with the attack. Her nervous companion then said that he was having second thoughts too.
The minder furiously called an al-Aqsa commander and handed the mobile phone to the young bombers.
Arin was strong enough to resist the threats barked down the telephone; Issa was not. He walked down the street and blew himself up outside a cafe, killing two Israelis and injuring more than 40.
This account was pieced together by Israeli investigators who arrested Arin and the driver in subsequent days. It was related to Issa's family last week.
Posters glorifying his death are plastered around the dusty and near-deserted streets of Bethlehem, currently under Israeli army curfew.
They show a smiling teenage boy with the first wisps of a moustache on his upper lip and a sparkle in his eye. The wording acknowledges his youth: it refers to the new "martyr" as a "lion cub".
Mrs Budeir's desolation contrasts starkly with the pride that many Palestinian women declare that they feel when their sons have "martyred" themselves - and murdered countless innocent Israelis - in the name of the Palestinian resistance struggle.
Even though Mrs Budeir blames Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, for creating the conditions in which extremists thrive, she forbade her sons from joining in street protests in case they were injured. As she spoke, Israeli armoured vehicles rumbled up a hillside and the chatter of machinegun-fire rang across the valley.
Her eldest son, Khaled, 25, described Issa as a popular boy, a keen player of football and chess and a computer enthusiast who planned to study business administration at college.
His family insist that they had no inkling that the youngest of six children had been recruited into the murderous world of Palestinian terrorism.
"We never discussed politics in this house. We want to improve ourselves by work, work, work," said Khalil, 20, another son who works with Khaled in a confectionary business.
Their father, Abed Rebboh, a partially blind lawyer who was in Jordan making arrangements for his retirement, still refuses to believe that the son who often helped carry his papers to court is dead.
Even after Issa disappeared on the evening of May 21 and his family heard of the bombing the next night, they never dreamt that the two events might be linked. They organised search parties and called the police, fearing that he had been injured in a car accident or had run away from home.
Two days later, however, Issa was named as the suicide bomber and his farewell message, recorded on video tape, was played on television.
"I felt sick, shocked and completely confused," said Mrs Budeir. "I still could not believe that this was my son."
The same day, masked men from the al-Aqsa brigade arrived at the house with the "martyr" posters. The family later turned away representatives of the Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, who issues cheques to the parents of suicide bombers.
I know this sounds repugnant and will never happen, but it is the most compassionate thing we could possibly do.
We never discussed politics in this house.
Even though Mrs Budeir blames Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, for creating the conditions in which extremists thrive
But it seems that politics were discussed to a degree.
The Palestinians could have had their state years ago. They could be working and trading with their neighbors, living in prosperity, watching their children grow into responsible adults with a bright future ahead of them. All they had to do is stop the terrorists bombers.
They have no idea how much damage they have brought onto themselves.
Pali version of 'Publishers Clearing House'.
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