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Inside Palestinian Resistance Movements
Revisiting the Concept of Martyrdom*
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Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam and a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the face of a merciless occupier. (Photo by Nadia El-Awady) |
I was told it would be impossible.
I had asked to meet with any member of the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas. Members of the Brigades, I was told, do not even know each other. The Brigades emphasize secrecy in order to protect their members from targeted killings by the Israeli army and to allow them the free mobility they need in order to conduct their clandestine activities.
Within hours, however, I had managed to get into a taxi with a man who would bring me to the home of a member of the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades.
Residing deep within the inner recesses of the Balata Refugee Camp in the West Bank of occupied Palestine are men who are on the top of Israel's most wanted list. Balata, and the city of Nablus that embraces it, are famed by Palestinians as the center of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. Israel's nightly incursions into the city and camp looking for wanted fighters attests to this. A look into the lives of these men and their families reveals normal men living under abnormal circumstances. Confusing to an outsider, these men are willing to die for their people so they can live with a sense of honor and pride. But the results they look for are not always as easily achieved.
Inside Al-Qassam
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| The Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus is famed by Palestinians as a center of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. |
I had almost expected to be blindfolded so as not to remember where I was taken, but I was not. The disappointment of not living out a Hollywood-movie-style adventure weighed heavily somewhere in the back of my consciousness. I had to stop watching so many movies.
The taxi drive from the center of Nablus to the Balata Refugee Camp was short; perhaps a 10-minute drive. Balata seemed to my eye to be an extension of the city proper. Getting out of the taxi onto the main street, we entered the camp from a side alley so as not to bring too much attention to ourselves. I was led through the narrow alleyways that wind between cramped two- and three-story buildings until we finally reached our destination.
A flight of cement stairs with no banister took me up to a second story apartment. Inside this small, two-room apartment, I met Mohamed,** his wife, and children.
Officially launched in 1991 in the midst of the first Palestinian Intifadah, the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades are composed of a network of specialized cells that work independently of each other all over the West Bank and Gaza. The numbers of its members are known only to its leadership.
Mohamed, who is 31 years old, has been a member of the brigades since 1998.
In no way does Mohamed's stature fulfill the image I had in my mind of a resistance fighter. Short and slight in build, he is the kind of person who could walk by you without ever being noticed. According to Mohamed, this is what the brigade cell leaders look for while recruiting new members.
"The thinner they are the better," said Mohamed, when I asked how members are chosen. "That way they don't stand out among people," he explained.
Other criteria include piety, steadfastness, and an ability to maintain secrecy. Members must also not be the type of person who relishes in the spotlight. "Those we leave for politics," Mohamed smiled.
Mohamed, a leader of two Qassam cells, is an explosives expert. His role is to teach his team members how to make explosive belts and to prepare belts when ordered by the Brigades' leaders.
Mohamed's wife offered a small cup of sweet tea with desert sage. Fresh date biscuits were served with the tea. As is proper in religious households all over the Muslim world, she attended the whole conversation I had with her husband, getting up infrequently only to get something from the kitchen or to attend to her children.
| "We don't have F16s or tanks. All we have is our own bodies to give." |
Mohamed's wife, Sara,** is one of the few Palestinian women who have been allowed into the secret world of the Qassam Brigades. As a matter of policy, women are kept away from Hamas' militant activities. Wives are usually completely unaware of their husbands' involvement with the Brigades. Mohamed's role as a cell leader, however, and the fact that his home might be used at times as a secret hideaway for militants, necessitated indoctrinating her into the Brigades.
Because of their increasingly important role with the Brigades, Mohamed and his wife broke off most social contact with their families, friends, and neighbors. It is vital to their role that no one appears uninvited to their home, they explained.
Mohamed's two cells are formed of three members each, including himself. Members of one cell do not know any other members of the Qassam Brigades. Only Mohamed, as a cell leader, has access to the Qassam leadership.
Mohamed explained his cells' roles as explosives teams. "I receive a task list and inform my teams to prepare what we need as quickly as possible. An explosive belt can be ready within 24 hours," he said.
The raw materials needed for explosives are obtained through a long chain of individuals that eventually leads to someone in Israel. According to militants I spoke with, there is a black market within Israel for selling ammunition, weapons, and raw materials for explosives to Palestinians in the West Bank. Raw materials for explosives are sometimes sold in the West Bank under the counter in small shops set up for other things, or by gold merchants who normally require such materials for their work.
Mohamed explained that the actual preparations of explosives are done in apartments registered under imaginary names or in apartments that are in well-ventilated areas. The preparation process results in the emission of a pungent odor that can quite easily reveal what is going on within the confines of these apartments. Special care is taken to prepare only small quantities at a time and to ventilate the apartment well so that the utmost secrecy is maintained.
"Where do you keep these materials?" I asked, wondering how all this goes on in a city that is constantly invaded by the Israeli army.
Mohamed smiled and his eyes twinkled. He got up, left the apartment, and came back in no longer than two minutes' time.
He revealed a small plastic bag that contained a black powder in addition to a gas mask. "It's all close by!" he exclaimed.
Mohamed built his home with his own two hands, so he obviously knows where to hide things.
I asked Sara what it was like to have dangerous materials in or near her home. She gave a shy smile and recounted a night when the Israeli army knocked on their door and told everyone inside to evacuate the apartment for inspection. Some of the raw materials Mohamed uses to prepare explosives were in the house that night. Sara hid them in her clothes, threw on a robe, grabbed her children, and ran downstairs. Luckily, the Israeli soldiers did not frisk her that night. "I was scared, of course," she said. "But we were reciting the Qur'an."
"I believe that the land of Palestine is from the sea to the river," said Mohamed referring to the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. "We don't have F16s or tanks. All we have is our own bodies to give. We are completely aware that what we are doing will not give a complete result, but at least it's a form of resistance that can inflict pain," he said.
Why suicide missions and not some other form of resistance? "Because of the nature of the struggle and our love for martyrdom," he explained. "We want to send a message: All we have to fight with is our bodies."
Mohamed's views on the death of Israeli children during Qassam missions, a view repeated constantly by most Palestinians I spoke with, was unnerving. "A child is the responsibility of his father. They should return to their country of origin. There is no war without victims. Israelis who were children during the first Intifadah are today's soldiers," he said.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
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| Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are easy to bump into on the streets of Nablus. |
Gaining access to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant arm of the Fatah political party, was much easier. My first run-in with Brigade members was on my first night of a three-night stay in Nablus. In the old city of Nablus, a group of clearly armed men were supervising the cleanup of an Israeli attack from the night before.
I asked a Palestinian journalist friend of mine to arrange for an interview with someone from Al-Aqsa Brigades. Unaware that I had been in Balata earlier that same day, he took me to the refugee camp. "We'll find someone as we walk around," he assured me.
Balata has a population of 25,000 squeezed into 2 sq. km of land. Its inhabitants arrived from all over Palestine in 1948 and it is the largest refugee camp in the West Bank.
Several Palestinians I had met in the previous days had voiced their opinion that members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have recently been turning into bullies. "The good ones have all died," they would tell me. It had become recent practice for families to ask for the intervention of Al-Aqsa Martyrs militants when disputes arose with other families, for example.
Soliman Bishara, my Palestinian journalist friend, explained that some Palestinian-controlled land had become so lawless that Al-Aqsa Martyrs even intervene in sentencing criminals according to their crimes. Some criminals are flogged. Once, Soliman explained, the Brigades uncovered five Palestinian collaborators with the Israelis. Three were killed, and two others shot in their legs.
Israel's destruction of many Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons has been a catalyst for this process. Palestinians fear that placing criminals in Palestinian jails, what few remain, exposes them to almost certain death by the Israelis. Jails that can host Palestinian militants are seen as easy targets by the Israelis.
Bishara stopped and spoke with a man sitting at the side of the road. He asked him if he knew how we could get in touch with anyone from the Al-Aqsa Brigades. "My friend is an Egyptian journalist and is working on an article," he explained. The man looked at us both, seemed to be contemplating what best to do, and made a call on his cell phone. The minute he hung up he invited us into his home and told us someone would come soon to speak with us.
We were directed into a ground-floor sitting room. Pictures and names of Al-Aqsa martyrs were scattered on the walls. Two other men joined us. Cigarette smoke filled the room the minute they all sat down. We were offered tea. The men were apprehensive but welcoming nonetheless. None of them were willing to tell me who we were waiting for.
About ten minutes later, a tall, heavy-built man walked in. He shook my hand and sat down next to me. He lit a cigarette and I introduced myself, explaining that I was interested in writing an article about Palestinian resistance movements.
Facing forward but watching me through the sides of his eyes, Abu Mujahid** told me how he joined Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
At the age of 17, Abu Mujahid was imprisoned by the Israelis and accused of "resisting occupation," he said. After his release he joined the PA police force. "When the second Palestinian Intifada broke out, we started forming militia groups on behalf of the Fatah political party. Eventually Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were formed," said Abu Mujahid, who considers himself one of the Brigades' founding members.
Abu Mujahid, 32 years old and not married, has been wanted by the Israeli army since February 2000. He claims to be the first on Israel's most-wanted list of Balata militants. "A Palestinian imprisoned by the Israelis had told them that I had been involved in martyr operations," something Abu Mujahid would neither confirm nor deny. "Since the army came looking for me that night in 2000, I haven't slept a single night in my own home," he said.
| "Our goal is not to die. ... We die for others to live." |
Abu Mujahid inhaled on his cigarette. Dressed in green and beige army pants and sneakers, he was very different from Mohamed whom I had met earlier that day. I couldn't get over how huge his sneakers were. This was more like the militant I had imagined.
Abu Mujahid explained that the Al-Aqsa Brigades were formed to resist the Israeli occupation using any means possible, from stones to ammunition. "We buy our weapons from Israel and from other Arab countries," he said. "We have members responsible for supplying weapons, others for martyr operations, others for transportation, and yet others for preparing explosives," he explained.
The recruitment process is simple. "Someone comes to us and says he wants to become a martyr. We check him out. Does he have family problems [and just wants to die]? If so, we turn him away. Someone else wants to avenge a brother [killed by the Israelis]. We help him out," said Abu Mujahid matter-of-factly.
Some militants choose to use a Klashinkov (a Russian rifle) during operations, and others choose the explosive belt. "The choice is up to them," Abu Mujahid explained. "The most significant sign of martyrdom is when one explodes himself," he added.
"Our goal is not to die," he explained. "Life is precious to any human being. People want to live in their homeland. We die for a cause that we believe in; it's for our religion and for our homeland. We die for others to live," he said.
I asked about targeting Israeli civilians. "Israelis target civilians," said Abu Mujahid, reminding me of a whole family in Gaza who were shot dead only days earlier in that month of June while picnicking on the beach. "They don't care about children or women. We pay them back in like. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
When I asked about deaths among Israeli children, he said, "Mistakes happen. I can't stop an operation after it has started because of a straying child. Operations take months to prepare. If an istish-hahdi (a militant conducting a martyr operation) goes in, there is no way to pull him out. During wars mistakes happen and innocent people pay the price."
I asked Abu Mujahid if he feared for his life, or if he ever wanted to get married. Abu Mujahid has been on the run for the past six years of his life. "I'm not afraid. Our destiny is either prison or the grave. I have no regrets. I'll marry in heaven. Our life here is only fleeting moments. We want the afterlife."
Insensitive Preconceptions
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| "In front of me was a very angry woman, a woman who felt that she gave everything to her country…In return she received no help to rebuild her family’s life." |
"Now I want to interview umm shaheed!" I told Bishara as we left Abu Mujahid's family home, as it turned out to be. Umm shaheed is the Arabic term for "mother of a martyr." Again, preconceived images were controlling my thoughts. I was unimpressed by the two militants I had met that day. To create the perfect article I wanted to present the bright side of the story. The umm shaheed that we Arabs always see in the media is the one ululating at her son's death, expressing her pride in the son that gave his soul for his religion and country.
We walked through some of the alleyways of Balata, and eventually Bishara chose a middle-aged man engaged in jovial conversation with a friend to ask where we could find umm shaheed. "My sister is umm shaheed!" he exclaimed.
Her house was just a few steps away. Again we were directed into a ground-floor sitting room. A young boy, about 10 years old, entered the room, shook our hands politely, and told us his mother would join us shortly. His older brother, in his early 20s, offered us tea. By that time my bladder was on the verge of bursting and I had to politely decline.
And in came Umm Mohammed (as a sign of respect, women in many Arab countries are called Umm [mother of] their first-born son). Umm Mohammed looked as if she was in her early 50s. She had an air about her that commanded respect. There were five men in the room by the time she walked in, and all went quiet with reverence as she took her seat.
The first thing that caught my eye was a necklace that dangled from Umm Mohammed's neck. It contained the picture of her martyred younger son. Muhannad Mahmoud Abu Zoor died in a martyr operation on May 31, 2002. Umm Mohammed only heard of his death three days later after overhearing a conversation between two of her neighbors. The whole neighborhood had been keeping the news from her. "The Israelis just destroyed one martyr's home, next they will be destroying Muhannad’'s home," they were saying.
This is the part that I wanted for my story. Here was the juice. It was then that I asked the most insensitive question of my life.
"So how did you feel when you heard your son had died a martyr?" I asked in anticipation. The woman looked at me as if she suddenly realized I was an alien from another planet. "How do you think I felt?" she retaliated as her voice rose. "Should I fly? I flew!" I was so stupid and insensitive that I hadn't caught the tone of sarcasm and indignation in her voice.
| "Our homeland doesn't deserve [his matryrdom]. It's full of spies for the Israelis." |
"I went crazy, of course!" she said, and it all suddenly hit me like a locomotive. "I couldn't understand how this happened! Our homeland doesn't deserve [his martyrdom]! It's full of spies for the Israelis! After my son died, the Israelis destroyed my house. They imprisoned two of my sons, one for three years and another for five. And what did those in charge [in Palestine] do? They came to us from abroad and robbed the people."
I was dumbfounded. A mother of four children myself, I suddenly realized that the death of a son is a catastrophe for any mother. The image portrayed in Arab media of mothers of martyred sons, although perhaps true in some cases, was not true for all. In front of me was a very angry woman, a woman who felt that she gave everything to her country; her son's soul and life, two of her sons to Israeli prisons, and her home. In return she received no help to rebuild her family's life. Her son's memory was not honored even by a simple visit on the anniversary of his death.
"I now go around telling young resistance fighters to go home," Umm Mohammed told me. "I thank God for endowing my son with martyrdom. God has more compassion for him than we do," she said "The martyrs are with God, but for a people who do not deserve it," she concluded.
One of Muhannad’'s cousins, who was sitting next to Umm Mohammed, jumped in, "He did what he did for God, not for the people!"
And sensing my own state of confusion and with a comprehension of what Arabs normally see in the media, Umm Mohammed's brother felt a need to explain. "She didn't always talk this way about her son's martyrdom," he said. The difficulties Umm Mohammed faced in rebuilding her life and that of her family, in addition to the sense of ingratitude she felt from the Palestinian Authority, were what led to this reaction, he explained.
Sleepless Nights, Lawless Days
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| The Howara checkpoint on the outskirts of Nablus carefully controls movement in and out of the city. |
Nablus was a harrowing experience. I stayed in a quaint hotel in the old city for three nights. Two of the three nights were sleepless. The Israeli army entered the old city each night to conduct house-to-house searches for militants on their wanted list. The incursions were accompanied by gunfire and sound bombs from 11 p.m. till 7 a.m. I was not afraid. I realized that this was just the way life was in Nablus. But I was irritated. I could not sleep from the noise.
In the mornings I would look through the streets of Nablus for any signs of Palestinian police. There were none. "They hide in their offices," I would be told by my friends. "They are weak and can do nothing for us," they would say.
My visit to Nablus ended, and I slowly moved through the stranglehold checkpoint the Israelis have on its outskirts. My next destination was Ramallah, where Palestinian security police could be seen driving their cars along the quiet roads of this city of affluence.
The Reasoning of a Religious Scholar
| "It's difficult to control someone's feelings if they have lost a father, their family, their home. …I can't prevent that person from conducting a martyr operation." |
It was on the veranda of a spacious Ramallah apartment that I met with Dr. Ismail Nawahdeh, professor of Islamic Law at Al-Quds University and also one of only four imams who give the Friday sermon at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
I had been discussing with Nawahdeh his opinions on Israeli-Palestinian scientific cooperation. Being a science journalist, I was in Palestine covering a variety of science-related topics. The veranda was full of Nawahdeh's relatives. They were all chit-chatting, as many of them hadn't seen each other for a while. But when I asked Nawahdeh what his thoughts were on the act of blowing oneself up as a form of resistance against the Israeli occupation, a hush suddenly fell over everyone on the veranda. I had hit a sensitive chord, and I knew it.
Nawahdeh's opinion surprised everyone. He explained that the act of suicide was haram (prohibited) in Islam. But he acknowledged that the Palestinian people are under a great deal of stress. "It's difficult to control someone's feelings if they have lost a father, their family, their home. …I can't prevent that person from conducting a martyr operation."
Nawahdeh explained, however, that such operations had no precedence in Islamic history. He explained the difference between defending one's land with the possibility of being killed in the act, and defending one's land with the certainty of being killed. He also wanted Palestinians to look closer at the results. "When we kill ten of theirs, they kill a thousand of ours!" he said. "We need to prepare ourselves for a day when we can fight without dying for nothing in return."
As long as I was on a roll, and already had seemed to offend some of Nawahdeh's relatives by asking a taboo question on the conductance of martyr operations that involve blowing oneself up, I decided to throw the next bombshell.
"What about killing Israeli civilians?" I asked. Two of his relatives looked at me with disgust. Nawahdeh was more open-minded, however. He explained that the Prophet Muhammad and the caliphs that followed him would advise their armies not to incur harm on women, children, the elderly, houses of worship, animals, or even trees. "From an Islamic jurisprudential perspective, I say that doing harm to civilians is not permitted. But if the opposing army targets civilians, it is the right of the other army to do the same. If Israel targets Cairo, it is the right of Egypt to target Tel Aviv. If Muslim civilians are targeted [by Israelis], it is the right of the Muslims to target Israeli civilians," he concluded.
When Palestine Becomes a Somalia
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Jarat Chopra has been an independent consultant for the Palestinian Authority since 2000.
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There are a multitude of armed factions operating on the Palestinian political scene. Many of Palestine's political movements have one or more military arms. And these factions have, in some cases, begun to fight not only the Israelis, but each other. And the Palestinian Security Sector that works under the authority of the Palestinian government is in a state of utter chaos. A report issued in July 2005 by the Strategic Assessments Initiative and the International Transition Assistance Group (ITAG) described in disturbing detail the lack of coordination and the overlapping roles that exist between 14 different sectors of the Palestinian security agencies.
Jarat Chopra, director-general of ITAG, believes that the way things are heading, the Palestinian territories are on a sloping path toward a situation similar to that in Somalia in 1992.
Chopra has been working with the Palestinian Authority as an independent consultant since 2000. Over dinner, in a chic Palestinian restaurant in Ramallah, he explained his analysis of the Palestinian security situation.
"There is a breakdown of formal authority and formal structures. There are a lot of relations between families and parts of the security services, and as formal structures break apart, people revert to social structures. That's where the weapons go," he explained. Factions are then formed of multiple families that may include members of Palestinian security services. Those factions then evolve and metamorphose according to the situation on the ground. "Then it's very difficult to pin down because it's changing so often and so quickly," he said. "It's no longer a civil war. It's no longer factional conflict. It's no longer social conflict. It's perpetual morphing of armed actors. That's one thing that's happening. Whether or not it can be reversed is an open question."
Chopra, who has years of experience in peace-keeping operations, including those in East Timor, Somalia, Nicaragua, and the Western Sahara, explained that the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories is adding fuel to the fire.
"There's no money. People can't afford to buy food and the food supply is breaking down. Food will become very expensive and it will become difficult for outsiders to deliver food because it will become too dangerous. As soon as weapons get linked to food, and food becomes a weapon and a source of power, it's going to be very difficult to put things back together again. In Somalia you had starvation but you had intervention. Here no one is going to send their army into this situation to deliver food."
And the fact that the international community has been reluctant to provide financial assistance to the Hamas-led government has only worsened the situation. "People say that cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority is not punishing the Palestinian people." Chopra explained that cutting off aid to Palestinian institutions and siphoning it off directly to the people just doesn't work. What costs US$100, for example, for an institution to do will cost thousands of dollars without the institution. "The international community has not prepared itself for what's happening," he said.
The situation in Palestine is dire; but it has been for over 50 years. It is a land under occupation. After spending three weeks in this beautiful land, I came to one important conclusion: Palestine can only become strong if the Muslim ummah is strong. It is our own weakness that has led to this. I believe that many of our Arab leaders have allowed their people to indulge themselves in the Palestinian cause because it distracts them and siphons their energy away from other real, internal problems we have within our own Arab governments. When the day comes that true democracy prevails in the Arab world, when the Arab people have learned how to voice their opinions through non-violent means, when systems are set in place that allow true involvement in the democratic process in the Arab world, then, and only then, will we, as Muslims, be able to help solve the Palestinian equation.
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* All people interviewed for this article were completely aware of the fact that I am a journalist. All information revealed in this article is information that the militants were willing to have published. The two militants and the mother of the martyr interviewed in this article were chosen completely at random, but may not be representative of their corresponding groups.
** The names of Palestinian militants mentioned in this article have been changed to protect their identities, as per their request.
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Nadia El-Awady is IslamOnline.net’s deputy editor in chief and managing science editor. She is an award-winning journalist and is frequently invited to international conferences to speak on issues related to science journalism. El-Awady is also the chair of the World Federation of Science Journalists’ program committee and the president of the Arab Association of Science Journalists. You can reach her at nadia.elawady@iolteam.com
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