Posted on 22-8-2003
Martyr
In Whose Interest
by Chris McGreal in Hebron,
August 21, 2003, The Guardian
When Arij Joubeh's family says she knew nothing of her husband's
intentions as he left to blow up an Israeli bus carrying religious
Jews, it is not hard to believe them.
She was clearly not prepared for the carnage exacted by Raed
Mesk - who disguised himself as an ultra-orthodox Jew so he
could kill 20 people, including six children - or she would
already have packed.
Yesterday, at a wake in Hebron for the bomber, the family said
Mrs Joubeh had heard the news of her husband's actions with
alarm. Six months' pregnant, and with two children aged four
and 18 months , she realised the first thing she had to do was
to get out of her home in Hebron. The Israeli army routinely
blows up the houses of suicide bombers.
Within a couple of hours the flat was stripped bare. By the
time the troops did arrive, at 2am, neighbours had even chiselled
out the window frames and stashed them for the family. The soldiers
asked questions of the neighbours and left.
But the shock and desperation did not stop the widow from praising
her husband's actions. "Raed dreamed of being a martyr.
That was God's wish," she said.
Other Palestinians in Hebron were more troubled. Praise for
the mass murder was muted even in a city with a bitter history
at the hands of a few hundred deeply religious and well armed
Jews who have embarked on a kind of ethnic cleansing of the
town centre.
The hall hired for the suicide bomber's wake, without his body,
was largely empty, perhaps in part because the army had arrested
17 relatives. It was also surprisingly devoid of the Hamas flags
which usually adorn such events. In terms of numbers of dead,
the Jerusalem bombing was the costliest attack on a bus in the
past three years of intifada.
Yet many Palestinians kept their distance. Some said they feared
the slaughter would mean an end to the six-week-old ceasefire
and faltering peace process, which offers the only glimmer of
hope for an end to the conflict.
Others privately speculated that the Hamas leadership had not
authorised the attack, and that it had been carried out unilaterally
by the Hebron faction.
But whatever the Palestinians' views on the bombing, there was
common agreement that the Israelis had brought the attack on
themselves.
"The ceasefire means nothing to the Israelis," said
Abdul al-Nsary, an uncle of the suicide bomber. "The assassinations
didn't stop, the barriers and roadblocks didn't disappear, the
settlers are still attacking us. If only they stopped one thing
- assassinating militants - the ceasefire would be a success.
But the Israelis won't give it this chance."
Friends and family paint a picture of 29-year-old Raed Mesk
that is now the classic portrait of a suicide bomber, particularly
one from Hebron. No one believed he was capable, they said.
People described him as a deeply religious man who was a preacher
in the local mosque and just months from completing his degree
in religion.
"He was a very nice, straight person," said a neighbour,
Mohammed al-Monshar. "None of us would think he would do
a thing like that." But deeper probing of his family reveals
a man angry with the world. He had been in jail as a 15-year-old
during the first intifada in the 1980s, for being a member of
Hamas.
"He believed there is one rule for the Americans and Israelis
and another for people like the Palestinians," said a cousin,
who declined to give his name. "He was very angry that
the Israelis did not take the ceasefire seriously, that they
kept on killing. The final straw was the killings of Kawasame
and Sidr. He said the suicide action was in revenge for that."
In recent days, the Israeli army has killed Abdullah Kawasame,
a high-ranking member of Hamas in Hebron, and Mohammed Sidr,
the Islamic Jihad commander in the city. Mesk was a close friend
of Kawasame and felt his death particularly painfully. But it
was the killing of Sidr that generated the most controversy.
Although Israel is not a formal party to the ceasefire declared
in late June, it had agreed to stop the raids on Palestinian
cities to assassinate Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah activists
it accused of terrorism. But Israel said it reserved the right
to stop imminent attacks on its citizens.
A week ago, the army hunted down and killed Sidr. It said he
was a "ticking bomb" in the midst of planning suicide
attacks. Hamas said he was doing no such thing and noted that
it had adhered rigorously to the ceasefire. People in Hebron
said the killing was an assassination aimed at scuppering the
truce.
The military certainly had a score to settle with Sidr. Last
year he launched an attack in which the Israeli army commander
in Hebron was killed.
Shortly before the ceasefire was announced at the end of June,
the Palestinian security minister, Mohammed Dahlan, gave an
interview to the Guardian in which he warned that the Israeli
army was bent on sabotaging the peace process.
In Hebron, they have no doubt about it. "Every time they
reach agreement, the Israelis do something to provoke the Palestinians,"
said Abdul al-Nsary. "The Israelis want to see a suicide
operation more than the Palestinians do."
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