| Beside her, assuming the shape of an invincible bandit, is a toothless man with a machine gun slung across his shoulders. He is peering into another room where three young women dressed in material that looks like billowing black sails, stand around a table. One has light-purple sandals, another scrubbed nails, while the third wears the faint smell of sweet perfume. The young women in the room, their eyes moving awkwardly between a small canvas of skin, have a magnetic lure as they fidget and whisper and twist. Two of them have explosives, probably triacetone-triperoxide, strapped to their bodies while the other wields a cumbersome rifle. Despite their obvious immaturity they are potent, volatile and assured. The little olive-skinned girl, smiling and starry-eyed, is edging closer to the room, offering a hiccup of colour and softness to the air. A squat table bulges with a mosaic of violence and rhetoric: hand grenades, a rocket launcher, a pristine copy of the Koran and some ammunition. Behind it, on the wall, are posters of child victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The solid black mass of teenagers is standing around the table; they are five feet tall and anxious. One of them is whispering and delicately fixing her friend's veil. The mock gunfight over, we are ushered into yet another room where we are given orange juice, water, coffee and cola. The air is thick with humidity. We finish our drinks and step towards the young women, a gunman with shaking hands at our side. Each of the girls has dark, almond-shaped eyes that trade delicate, giggling smiles. The three girls refuse to give their names but I will call them Iman, Halima and Maha. They are volunteers of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group that is part of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. In days, weeks or months one or all of them will strap explosives to their girlish frames and blow up themselves - and their victims - in a bloody show of defiance against Israel. It has taken more than three months of preparation to wend our way through the arabesque maze of Beirut's military factions - Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade - and finally meet Iman, Halima and Maha. But such is the volatility of camp life that the obstacles of the last few days almost proved insurmountable following the murder, in mid-July, of three Lebanese soldiers by a Palestinian from the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian city refugee camp, in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army tightened its siege of the camp where we had arranged to meet with Mounir Maqdah, a former commander in Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 and now a senior commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Lebanese authorities are not allowed into the country's Palestinian refugee camps so in a bid to solve the crisis without bloodshed a security committee representing major Palestinian factions - Fatah, Palestinian Liberation Front, Saiqa, Hamas, Palestinian Struggle and Popular Committees - was set up to pressure anyone who knew the whereabouts of the alleged killer. Effectively this meant no one was getting in or out of the camp. After a few days of negotiation Maqdah was in the custody of the Lebanese army and he finally agreed to see me. Driving into the camp past the Lebanese military checkpoint we are met with stares and much document checking. Once through we pass a maze of alleyways, a throng of shouting people, a fusion of Koranic verses and fiery rhetoric. We are meeting at the headquarters of Fatah, amid overcrowded cinderblock houses and rubbish-strewn streets, in a courtyard bustling with chickens and dusty, clapped out Mercedes. Young men in combat fatigues mill around, hands clasped around Kalishnikovs and AK-47 assault rifles. These days Maqdah grants few public appearances, preferring to spend his time embroiled in military affairs; he is in constant touch with leaders of the Palestine intifada by phone and internet. There is a palpable tension of mistrust in the air, tempered only by suspicion and caution. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which the US Government recently added to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations, has taken part in at least ten suicide attacks. In May this year a suicide bomber killed himself and two Israelis, in the town of Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, and the Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. Subsequent reports in the Israeli media claimed that Israeli security forces had focused on Maqdah in its hunt for a culprit expressing hostile intentions towards Lebanon and the Palestinian refugee camps. Around this time Ariel Sharon's media adviser stated that following the questioning of senior Fatah operatives, it was revealed that Maqdah "directed and financed major attacks against Israeli citizens during the course of the current wave of Palestinian violence". Later, when I speak with Israeli government spokesman Daniel Seaman, he confirms Maqdah is considered a risk to the security and the citizens of Israel. "He is relatively secure in Lebanon because in the meantime we are honouring the commitments of the UN resolutions and we are not taking any activities in south Lebanon unless in self-defence. But if he plays with fire he will get burned. He is someone we are aware of and we'd like to make it clear to him he is not in a profession that he can retire from." Mounir Maqdah is a tall 42-year-old, beguilingly cinematic, with an alligator's smile and eyes that appear stripped of any illusions about what decency there may be left in human nature. He was born in the one-and-a-half kilometre area of Ain al-Hilweh and has a wife and six children aged from eight to 21. Involved with the military groups since he was 12 he seems intense but is by no means unpleasant. His carefully considered uniform of crumpled military fatigues and the small weapon he has at his side brings to mind the Che Guevera-style Arab nationalist era of Beirut from years gone by. His "true home", he says, is in Gabsiyeh, from which his family fled in 1948, when Israel declared itself a state. On March 28, 2000, Jordan's State Security Court indicted Maqdah on charges of providing military training to a group of Osama bin Laden's followers who planned to carry out attacks in the Kingdom. He denied the charges but told United Press International that if bin Laden had attempted "to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem, I would have been honoured to co-ordinate with them". In September 2001 Maqdah was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death. Despite years of negotiation with the Israelis, he says, the only thing that will allow the Palestinians to return to their former home is resistance. "The intifada will grant us the right to return." At least 1,471 Palestinians and 564 Israelis have been killed since Palestinians began an uprising for independence in September 2000 after peace talks stalled. Once seen as an aberration, the suicide bomber is now almost commonplace: it has proved the most effective weapon in the Palestinian arsenal having killed around 250 Israelis in two years. In response to such actions Israel reoccupied West Bank cities last month. Generally, extreme acts of violence have not formed part of the lexicon of Palestinian women's struggle but since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000 there have been four female suicide bombers, all trained by al-Aqsa. The granite certainties of suicide bombing have made Maqdah something of a cult hero among the refugees in Ain al-Hilweh. The brigades began as an offshoot of Fatah, the secular Palestinian nationalist movement led by Arafat. When Israel and the PLO signed a peace deal in 1993, Arafat renounced terrorism and founded a new, Palestinian-led administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Maqdah believes the Oslo accords failed to fulfil the minimum aspirations of Palestinians in the diaspora and Arafat deserted his people and became part of the occupation. It has fallen, he says, to the Brigades to achieve the legitimate aims of the Fatah movement. "Every time we show our identity cards we remember Palestine," he says. "Every time we walk through the cramped streets we remember Palestine and every time one of us dies in these conditions we remember Palestine. They can kill everything in our minds but not our dreams of Palestine." Every so often he raises a hand and flicks an order, requesting a mobile telephone or a drink of water, like an insecure bureaucrat from a local municipality. Maqdah insists that when a man or woman volunteers to become a martyr it is not difficult to get them into the West Bank to begin their mission. "We can arrange it, we have our ways. It is harder to go to Tel Aviv, of course, but not the West Bank. It's not complicated." Typically, a volunteer female suicide bomber will train for between two weeks and two months, depending on the woman involved and her maturity. Previously the suicide bomber fitted a stereotype: male, unmarried, immature, under-educated, aged between 17 to 23 and fanatically religious. Today the martyr has evolved: he has become she. With al-Aqsa they are usually aged between 18 and 25, are female, intelligent and less inclined to be swayed by the promise to males of a Paradise of 70 virgins. On January 27, this year, Wafa Idris, 28, started the new trend of suicide bombers by killing an 81-year-old man and wounding about 40 more people in Jerusalem. The following month Darin Abu Aysheh, 21, who was studying English at university, struck at a roadblock. On March 29, Ayat Akhras, 18, killed herself, a guard and a 17-year-old girl outside a Jerusalem supermarket. The most recent was the deadliest. On April 12 Andaleeb Takafka exploded herself at a bus stop in Jerusalem - 104 people were injured and six Israelis died. "If they are needed we will send them," continues Maqdah. "They need to have a strong and mature mind to carry out their operation. We do not accept everyone who comes to us. The volunteer will be told about her operation maybe one day before or one hour before. She will know when she knows." Maqdah has two daughters aged 18 and 21 and insists he would have no problems if one of them wanted to volunteer. "I would accept," he says, "because she can make her own choice." Some days earlier I spoke with Usama Hamdan, a representative of the Muslim fundamentalist group Hamas, at his office in the suburb of Haret Hreik. Hamas, he told me, do not accept women as "martyrs" from a religious standpoint, believing they have a more positive role than a military one. The ideology of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, however, is rooted in Palestinian nationalism, not political Islam. While al-Aqsa commit the same sort of suicide bombings associated with Hamas and Palestininan Islamic Jihad, members draw their inspiration from Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese militia whose attacks drove Israel out of its self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. "Darin Abu Aysheh, who blew herself up [in Jerusalem]," says Hamdan, "had firstly gone to Hamas to offer herself as a volunteer but was rejected." Al-Aqsa was happy to accept her. "We are more open religiously," states Maqdah, "unlike Hamas. This is the strongest weapon we have against Israel. We mourn the loss of our women, but we know if we cannot stomach casualties we cannot exist in the Middle East. We will continue with attacks despite Israel's military offensive and the world's condemnation against them. What do we have to lose?" More than an hour passes before Maqdah tells us to travel to the Badaweh refugee camp in the north of Lebanon where we are to meet Iman, Halima and Maha. Two hours later, past the cityscape of Beirut, we arrive in the camp. Step into any refugee camp in Lebanon and you can see much of what you want to know about this conflict. The voice of Maqdah echoes in voices everywhere: that when Arafat accepted the Oslo accords he abdicated his responsibilities to the 1948 refugees, especially in Lebanon. The people here are in exile from exile. They are second-class Palestinians dreaming of a homeland they have never even set foot in. Decades after they fled to Lebanon the Palestinians in the 11 refugee camps are still a foreign presence. They have neither home, money, nor identity since they or their parents fled during Israel's War of Independence in 1948 and the Six Day War in 1967. Although there are no accurate statistics there are around 350,000 registered refugees, all rejected by their reluctant host Lebanon as permanent residents and largely forgotten by Arafat, who has little time and money to champion their cause. Palestinians are barred from many professions, including medicine, law and engineering and they enjoy no political rights in the country. In the camps there are no telephone lines, and barely any electricity with most people living around open sewers. The affairs of the camps remain under the control of local activists because the Lebanese government fear taking responsibility for the Palestinians. In the camps Palestinian children role-play martyrdom where they lie in the dirt and pretend they have been buried in a shallow grave. Iman tugs at her hijab and examines her rifle. Her olive skin is luminous in the hazy light of the room. Her clothes are deceptive and misleading, hiding as they do the severity of her proposed actions. She is 17 years old with a kind voice and a shy and hopeless look in her eyes. She scratches at her arm. Iman would like to study to be a doctor and help her people but, as a refugee, she is excluded from doing so. She lives in Badaweh with her parents and brother but her future is measured by the vagaries of politics. When she's serious her whole body nods. When she's angry her arms quickly rise. She doesn't understand why Western girls her age are only interested in pop music. She confesses that she is a little afraid to die but she is ready to become a martyr because it is, she believes, the only way to resist occupation by Israel and what she sees as the American support of Israel. "I am a little afraid but I am more afraid of what I see when I watch what they do against my people," she says. "This encourages me to do the operating against Israel." There is an injured quality to her voice when I suggest she might be too young to be a volunteer. "What Israel do against my people means I am not too young to become a martyr. I want to give freedom for my people." Do her parents know? "My mother knows and has given me encouragement for my operation." The three girls believe it is their duty to volunteer for their country and they cannot watch what is happening in "occupied Palestine" and expect someone else to do this for them. What al-Aqsa have managed to do is turn themselves into a group less dependent on a mass army of hardened fighters into an organisation of ordinary people ready to replenish the ranks. Politics is the girls' regular conversation in school and each of them can list "martyrs" they admire. All three mention Mohammed Daragmeh, who was 19 when he killed nine people and injured more than 50 at a bar mitzvah, in the name of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The practice of suicide bombing is alarming for the astonishing momentum that it has visited upon Israel. Each mission involves a great deal of support including drivers, explosive experts, scouts and guerillas. Mostly made from triacetone-triperoxide, usually in rented apartments and garages, the bombmakers combine acetone and phosphate with water. The mixture is left out to dry before a grinder breaks it down into powder form. From here the material is packed into pipes and strapped to the waist of the bomber. The way a woman dresses makes it much easier to carry out such missions. Families of suicide bombers now receive more than double the financial compensation than do the families of those killed by other means. Most bombers' survivors receive a permanent pension of $300-600 per month in addition to health care and the education of bombers' children. The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered to pay around $25,000 to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber. Halima, who is 18, shares Iman's ambition to train as a doctor. She has, she says, changed dramatically in the last year. Since Israel's two-week assault on the Jenin refugee camp - Palestinians claimed hundreds were killed, Israel claimed it was around 50 - she has become much more militant. "I could die at any time so I will die for my people," she says. "I watch what is happening to my people on television and that is enough persuasion for me." Does she watch what is happening to Israeli people too? Her head rears back; she struggles for an answer. Maha, who is 17, has set her steely heart on becoming a poet and would love to put her dreams onto paper, telling "heroic stories of the struggle of my people". When I ask how she feels about the prospect of killing innocent civilians, Iman interrupts saying that Israel also kills innocent Palestinian's, so she does not worry about this. "They are killing us also." All these women seem familiar - intelligent, forceful, naive and energetic - but are eminently unknowable. Yet they are at the cusp of their lives - the age of potential. They have formed the habits and preferences they will keep most of their days. If it weren't for the confines of the camp they would be delighting in the all- consuming nature of their teenage lives. Maha continues answering questions with aplomb, well versed in rhetoric. Yet I find the honesty of her answer to my last question unsettling. What will she miss most if she carries out her mission? Maha thinks a while. "I will miss poetry." What about your family? "They will accept what I am going to do. There is no need to miss them. I will be in a better place." Halima blinks a hundred times as she struggles with her veil and lifts her hand to her head for the umpteenth time. Her hazel eyes, deeply politicised by violence, television images and poverty, are heavy. For the most part I have become used to looking at them this way and feel less complicit because of it. She tosses her head into the air and makes a tsk sound. Halima's veil slips briefly from her eyes to reveal a petite, childish face with a girlish gap between her teeth. She offers a look so withering it might break her and I turn away, embarrassed. Five minutes later I watch the three teenagers as they are escorted away by their minders, and feel empty at the thought of what we have discussed and what might happen in the future. I walk outside sucking on the thin air. The pretty, olive-skinned girl is still peek-a-booing from the courtyard. She puts her hands in the air in surrender. I want to save her but I can't. Instead I pull the trigger on my imaginary gun. The invisible bullet fires straight through her heart. In a few years she'll probably be dead. Killing for the cause The first suicide bombing in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ripped through a West bank cafe on April 16, 1993. Sahar Tamam Nabulsi, 22, acting on behalf of Hamas, drove into two buses, killing himself and wounding eight Israelis. The aim of suicide bombing is to sacrifice one's life while attempting to destroy a target for the sake of a political goal. This type of attack was first witnessed in the 1980s in Lebanon, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have launched roughly 200 suicide attacks, killing hundreds of people. By the 1990s it had spread to Israel, Pakistan, Argentina, Panama, Turkey, Croatia and Kenya. During the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in May 2000, Hezbollah used women suicide bombers for the first time, although this practice was later stopped. Initially suicide bombers targetted their opponent's political and military infrastructure, but the focus has shifted to attacking civilians. In 1993 there were 13 suicide attacks on Israel and the figure gradually decreased until there were none in 1999. Since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in September 2000, however, the numbers have increased significantly. In 2000 there were four, while the following year there were 36. Prior to the most recent attack in Jerusalem, on July 31, when a Hamas suicide bomber struck at a Hebrew University killing himself, at least seven other people and wounding around 80, there had been 43 suicide bombings. The first female attack was carried out on January 27, 2002, by Wafa Idris, 28, a divorced ambulance worker from the Ramallah refugee camp. She killed an 81-year-old man and wounded about 40 more people in Jerusalem. The following month Darin Abu Aysheh, 21, who was studying English at university, struck at a roadblock. On March 29, Ayat Akhras, 18, was just months away from graduation and then marriage when she killed herself, a guard and a 17-year-old girl outside a Jerusalem supermarket. On April 12 Andaleeb Takafka blew herself up at a bus stop in Jerusalem killing six Israelis. All the women killed themselves on behalf of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. This year the brigade's attacks have killed more Israelis than those of Hamas. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade believes that suicide bombing will inflict much more pain on the Israelis than guerilla warfare, eventually hastening an end to occupation. (c) SMG Newspapers Ltd Not Available for Re-dissemination. |