Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

Her mother said, “Wafa’a had finally found what she wanted. A chance to show she was a true daughter of Palestine.”

Now, on that Sunday, five months after she had been accepted by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, she was ready to die for them.

On the night before, while the streets of Ramallah were filled with young discogoers, an elderly woman delivered a packet to the house where Wafa’a lived with her widowed mother. The packet contained a new bra and panties, along with a customized body suit. It was designed to conceal up to three kilos of high explosives and specially sharpened nails and razor fragments. The suit was designed to fit under Wafa’a’s street clothes. It had several pockets deep enough to take sticks of explosives. They would be distributed around her upper torso. Other pockets around her waist were for the nails and razor fragments. There was a separate pouch that extended over the genital area. Later Dr. Ariel Merari, a ranking expert at Tel Aviv University on the techniques of suicide bombers, suggested the pouch was created “because the Israeli security forces never search Arab women in that area of their body.”

Wafa’a had never met the person who made the suit. He was said to come from Jenin, the Arab city that would later be destroyed by Israeli forces. To Mossad the man was known as “the Tailor of Death.” The intelligence service eventually established that he was a highly skilled craftsman who used a treble stitch to sew the suit. It was made from a cloth sold in Arab shops for making undershirts. The sewing cotton came from a similar source. Mossad technicians decided the tailor probably used an old-fashioned hand-operated Singer sewing machine. Later it would emerge that Wafa’a’s suit, like all those worn by male suicide bombers, had been designed so that the distribution of explosives was carefully balanced, and the explosive effect would cover the widest possible area.

Wafa’a may also have received advice on the choice of outer clothing. “We know that some male suicide bombers have worn wigs and been well dressed. This has helped them to gain access to upmarket cafés and restaurants, which have been among their targets,” Dr. Merari has said. Wafa’a’s mother later recalled that her daughter had laid out her body suit and clean underwear on her bed early on that Sunday morning. Then she had chosen her finest hipster jeans and a loose-fitting blouse to conceal her body suit.

She had been joined by her spiritual adviser—a male member of the Martyrs. They had prayed together. Then he had recited passages from the Koran. He had handed her a copy of the Koran, which she tucked into her back trouser pocket.

To prepare a candidate for death, contacts with the family were reduced to a minimum. This was to reduce any hesitation over severing earthly ties. He or she was constantly reminded of the new life ahead. Only when a candidate was on the eve of martyrdom was time with his or her family allowed. In part this was to test whether or not he or she would weaken in his or her resolve.

Wafa’a, for example, spent her last two days with her mother. Only when she had taken delivery of her underclothes and body suit did she let her mother know what was going to happen. “We prayed together. For Palestine. For my daughter’s safe journey to a better world,” Was-fiya Ali Idris would recall.

Wasfiya is herself a woman who sees life through the prism of Islamic extremism. Her reading is confined to the Koran, her hero is Yasser Arafat. Her dream was that her daughter was going to her death to help create a Palestinian homeland.

In some respects Wafa’a Ali Idris did not quite fit the profile of a shaheed, a Martyr. Until she had been enrolled by the Martyrs, she had not shown any strong religious feelings. “After time with the Martyrs she became a devout follower of all that I had taught her as a child. There was not a day when she did not study the Koran,” said Wasfiya.

Her anger against Israel also became a living vibrant force that sustained her during her work as a paramedic. In the year before her death, she had been injured three times by Israeli soldiers as she had tended to Arabs wounded on the streets of Ramallah. Her mother would remember. “At that time my daughter was getting more and more angry. All she was doing was trying to save lives. But the soldiers did not care. Then one day she said to me, ‘Mother, I have joined the Martyrs. It is the only way I can serve my people. All those who have died have to be avenged!’ I understood her feelings.”

To grasp the power of martyrdom for such people, you need go no further than the Ramallah mosque where one of the imams explained (to the author): “First you must understand the meaning of the spirit. It draws us upward while the power of material things tries to hold us back. But when you are filled with a true desire to be a martyr, the material influence recedes. Only if you are a true believer will you begin to understand that. To all nonbelievers it is impossible to comprehend. But for those who have chosen to die, they know they are close to eternity. They have no doubts of the wonderful world that awaits them. Each and every one understands the legitimacy of what they are about to do. They have each made an oath on the Koran to carry out their noble action. It is the oath of jihad. We call it bayt al ridwan, named after the Garden of Paradise for the true prophets.”

In Ramallah suicide bombers are heroes. There are posters for the “Martyr of the Month.” They are celebrated in song and verse. They are remembered in Friday prayers in every mosque in the West Bank and Gaza City.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, said: “Love of martyrdom is something deep inside the heart. But these rewards are not in themselves the goal of the martyr. The only aim of the true believer is to win Allah’s satisfaction. That can be done in the simplest and speediest manner by dying in the cause of Allah. And never forget it is Allah who selects the martyrs.”

In March 2004, the sheikh was assassinated by an Israeli gunship as he left a mosque in Gaza City. His sermon had contained a familiar refrain: the need for more young men and women to sacrifice themselves.

There is no shortage of volunteers to follow Wafa’a Ali Idris.

Shortly after noon on that Sunday in March 2002, she blew herself up in a crowded Jerusalem street. She killed an eighty-one-year-old man and injured more than one hundred other men, women, and children. The explosives blew off her head and one arm and left a gaping hole in her abdomen. An hour later the radios in Ramallah proclaimed her to be “a true heroine of our people.”

Wafa’a had been manipulated in the name of religious extremism by the dark and dangerous world of Islamic fanaticism, which would ultimately lead to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the other suicide bomber attacks across the Middle East, in Pakistan, and in the Philippines.

Since Wafa’a died, more young women have experienced similar fates. Between them they have killed or injured close to 250 more Israelis.

Their actions are described as “sacred explosions.” The act of suicide is forbidden in Islam. But the spin doctors of the Martyrs are well versed in the black art of propaganda.

For families who have allowed their children to be sacrificed, the financial rewards are good. Each family receives a pension for life. While it varies, it is said to be a minimum of twice the income they received before their son or daughter died.

The money comes from Iran. It is laundered through the central banks from Damascus to Athens. From there it is electronically transferred to an account in Cairo. Then it is couriered to Gaza City for distribution by the Jihad Committee.