Ayat al-Akhras

Ayat al-Akhras was the third and youngest Palestinian female suicide bomber who, at age 18 (some sources report her age to be as young as 16), killed herself and two Israeli civilians on March 29, 2002 by detonating explosives belted to her body. The killings gained widespread international attention due to Ayat's age and gender and the fact that one of the victims was also a teenage girl. The killings led U.S. President George W. Bush to observe: “When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying, the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people.” [http://www.robincmiller.com/articles/a15.htm]

Childhood and family background

Ayat was raised in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, the daughter of Palestinian refugees who themselves grew up in a tent camp in the Gaza Strip. According to Newsweek journalist Joshua Hammer, Ayat's parents "fled from Arab villages near Tel Aviv at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After Israel occupied Gaza in 1967, [Ayat's parents] migrated to the Dehaishe camp" described as "a maze of cinder-block buildings, refuse-strewn alleyways and open sewers." Ayat's father found employment with an Israeli construction firm and built a three-story concrete house where Ayat and her four brothers and six sisters were raised.

According to some reports, Ayat was a straight-A student and had hopes of attending college and becoming a news reporter. In 2001 she became engaged and plans were made for a July, 2002 wedding.

Radicalization and preparation for violence

During the First Intifada, Ayat's oldest brother was jailed twice for attacking Israeli soldiers, and Ayat became fiercely politicized. During the Al-Aqsa Intifada or Second Intifada, Israeli troops shot and wounded her brother. Three cousins, members of Hamas, were killed in the Gaza Strip. According to Hammer, "when Mahmud Mughrabi, a close family friend and a member of Fatah, was shot dead while planting a roadside bomb near a Jewish settlement, the al-Akhras family hung a poster of the militant in their living room." [http://www.robincmiller.com/articles/a15.htm] On March 8, 2002, a next-door neighbor of Ayat's playing with his toddler daughter was killed by a stray bullet fired by Israeli troops as they were on a counter-terrorism operation. As Ayat's brothers tried to save the life of the dying neighbor, whom Ayat and her family had known since her childhood, Ayat collapsed in the street crying and hysterical.

This killing was the apparent trigger for Ayat's attempts to join one of the Palestinian militias. Ayat tried to join Hamas, but was turned away by the group because of a long standing policy against allowing females to fight in physical combat. The basis for this rule lies in teachings of the Qur'an that says Jihad is the domain of the male. However, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad have used female fighters at least on one occasion each, both as suicide bombers. Hamas used a female militant, Reem El-Reyashi as a bomber; the Palestine Islamic Jihad used Hanadi Jaradat, their first female bomber after Israeli troops killed her brother and cousin during a botched arrest. Other than these few occasions, Jihad has been restricted to Muslim males. The late spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin made a statement to the press after Ayat's bombing saying that the group would only use women after they ran out of men.

After days of searching, Ayat finally found a group that would accept her - the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a more secular group than Hamas and other strongly religious Palestinian militias. The group also had experience, using at least three other woman successfully in suicide bombings against Israel before Ayat. When she joined the group, it was deemed by its leaders that she would best serve as a suicide bomber. She underwent combat and suicide bomber training over a course of several weeks. Before her mission, Ayat made a video in which she lashed out at the regimes and militaries of Muslim nations throughout the world. She said: "I say to the Arab leaders, stop sleeping. Stop failing to fulfill your duty. Shame on the Arab armies who are sitting and watching the girls of Palestine fight while they are asleep."

The bombing and the victims

On March 29, 2002, Ayat was driven to the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem by a member of the militant group and given explosives. She detonated her explosives and killed two people: a 17 year-old Israeli girl named Rachel Levy [http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Memorial/2002/2/Rachel+Levy.htm] and a 55 year-old security guard named Haim Smadar [http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Memorial/2002/2/Haim+Smadar.htm] who had attempted to stop Ayat from entering the supermarket in the first place because he deemed her to be suspicious. Smadar's actions probably saved the lives of many, as Ayat would otherwise presumably have exploded the device deep inside the crowded market.

Reactions

The Al-Asqa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility in the press for the attack which the Israeli government denounced as an act of terrorism. Among some Palestinians and Islamic militants [http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP36702] , Ayat became a hero figure, but the reaction among Ayat's family was mixed. According to Hammer, Ayat's fiance would have stopped her if he had known her plan: "May God forgive her for what she has done," he reportedly said. Other members of Ayat's family condemn suicide bombings as morally wrong, but say that Israeli "brutality" had left Palestinians no other choice.

External links

*http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27233
*http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/23/60II/main555401.shtml

ee also

* Suicide bomber
* Female suicide bomber
* Palestinian terrorism
* Al-Aqsa Intifada
*Andalib Suleiman