A suicide bomb attack last week (SEPTEMBER 2004) at the French Hill junction in Jerusalem left two border policemen dead and over thirty Israeli civilians wounded. Yonatan (Mamoya) Tahio, 20, from Rehovot, and Menashe (Meni) Komemi, 19, from Moshav Aminadav, were killed in the attack[1]. A communique from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade of the Fatah PLO faction, headed by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the attack.  But in a statement issued by Arafat’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the PA leadership condemned the attack, claiming that such actions were used to justify Israeli actions against the Palestinian Arabs[2]. The communique identified the bomber as Zayneb Abu Salem, an 18-year-old woman, from the Askar refugee camp near Nablus. This was the ninth attack by Palestinian Arab terrorists that employed a female suicide bomber[3]. Far from being an isolated incident, research shows a growing phenomenon of the use of suicide bombings in general, and female suicide bombers in particular[4]. In absolute terms, the number of suicide bombings is rising, and there is also a growth in the number of terrorist organisations that have used suicide bombers[5]. To date, seventeen organisations in fourteen countries have employed this method. More worryingly, the impact of such attacks is far greater than the raw numbers may indicate. Although only 3% of terror attacks committed between 1980 and 2001 involved suicide bombers, these attacks accounted for half of the deaths caused by terrorism[6]. These figures do not include the 9/11 attacks on US targets, in which a large number of civilians were killed by suicide terrorists. Writing in Foreign Policy in 2000, Israeli academic Ehud Sprinzak noted that suicide terrorism was already employed by Muslims in the 11th century as a way to advance the cause of Islam[7]. The Assassins (Ismalis-Nizari) considered that they died as martyrs, and that their lives were sacrificial offerings. In distinction with their modern counterparts, though, they targetted particular individuals rather than perpetrating random attacks on bystanders. Investigating this modern phenomenon, researchers have identified a number of key characteristics of suicide attacks. First, the death of the perpetrator is a critical element in the act of the attack. If the terrorist does not kill him/herself, the attack will not succeed[8]. Second, suicide terrorism has a wider effect than the immediate casualties of the bomb itself, both in the psychological impact it carries to the surrounding population[9] and in the intense media attention that it attracts[10]. Finally, suicide terrorists routinely utilise the notions of martrydom and self-sacrifice as a means of last resort against far more conventionally powerful enemies[11]. The use of female suicide bombers is a relatively new phenomenon. The first attack dates from 1985, when a 16-year old Syrian girl drove a bomb-laden truck into an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) convoy in Lebanon, killing two soldiers. In the last two decades, women suicide bombers have been deployed in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Israel and Turkey. Amongst these, the extensive use of female suicide bombers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or the “Tamil Tigers”) in Sri Lanka is notable. The LTTE has deployed nearly 200 suicide bombers of whom 30-40% were women. This far exceeds the use of women by any other terrorist organisation. Palestinian Arab female suicide bombers, though, have the dubious distinction of claiming a number of “records” too. The first woman suicide bomber -- from the 1985 attack on IDF troops in Lebanon -- was also the youngest. In January 2002, Wafa Idris became the first Palestinian Arab woman to mount a suicide attack in Israel, killing one and injuring over a hundred in Jerusalem. Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack. The Palestinian Arab Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) first female bomber was Hiba Daraghmeh, who detonated a bomb in the Afula shopping mall in May 2003, killing three. The second PIJ bomber, Hanadi Jaradat, killed 21 Israelis in October 2003 in the attack on the Maxim restaraurant in Haifa, the greatest number of people killed in an attack by a female suicide bomber in Israel. In January 2004, Reem al-Reyashi was the first female suicide bomber to be deployed by Hamas, killing four Israeli soldiers at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. She was also the first mother to mount a suicide attack, leaving behind two infant children. In total, the nine suicide attacks on Israelis by women bombers have left 53 people dead and hundreds injured[12]. Since data is scarce, the motivations behind suicide bomb attacks are open to interpretation. Researchers have tended to concentrate on ideological (religious or nationalist), socio-economic (including the incentives of payments to terrorists’ families after their deaths), and personal (revenge, honour, psychological predisposition) reasons to explain suicide attacks[13]. Palestinian Arab women suicide bombers are too disparate a group to draw any general conclusions regarding motives[14]. Yet, they do conform to the one defining feature of all women suicide terrorists - their young age. The average female suicide bomber is 22 years old[15]. The widening phenomenon of female suicide bombers indicates two key issues. First, the deployment of young women by both religious and secular groups indicates the blurring of the lines between religious and nationalist motivations for attacks. Despite Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s condemnations of the first female suicide attacks on Israel by the secular Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in 2002[16], Hamas deployed its first female suicide bomber only two years later. PIJ was even quicker to take the decision to deploy women, noting the “successes” of such attacks by female Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terrorists. Whilst suicide terrorism is by no means generally accepted by Islamic religious leaders, a number of clerics are adding their voice of support to such acts[17]. The growing use of suicide terrorism also highlights the challenges of fighting terror groups. Suicide terrorists do not act as individuals - they are the product of terrorist organisations that legitimise and support such actions. Although Israel is constantly updating its knowledge of the tactical and operational methods used by Palestinian Arab terror groups, a far more difficult task is to address the root causes of terror - especially when a popular culture supports suicide terrorism as “martyrdom”. One researcher of the phenomenon of religious terrorism notes that Palestinian Arab schoolchildren play games that imitate the funerals of suicide bombers, listen to pop music that praises terrorists, and venerate popular heroes who are identified with laying down their lives in the fight against Israel[18]. In this environment, it will require a fundamental change in Palestinian Arab society to challenge the easy acceptability of deploying female suicide bombers. Such a shift will require a new and committed Palestinian Arab political leadership that can offer its people a better alternative. In the meantime, female suicide bombers appear to be a fixed feature of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel. HAMAS CHARTER 1988 "Hamas regards Nationalism (Wataniyya) as part and parcel of the religious faith.  Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims.  And this becomes an individual duty (footnote 25) binding on every man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband's authorization, and a slave without his master's permission." Footnote 25: Fard'ayn, is an individual duty under Islamic law, to distinguish from "Fard Kifaya", which is a collective duty.  Fard'ayn is an absolute duty which overrides other considerations such as the duties of a wife towards her husband and of a slave towards his master." [1] “Female suicide bomber kills two policemen in Jerusalem, injures 30”, Haaretz, 23/9/04 [2] ibid. [3] Clara Beyler, “Female Suicide Bombers - an update”, International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), 7/3/04 [4] Debra D. Zedalis, “Female Suicide Bombers”, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, June 2004 [5] Yoram Schweitzer, “Suicide Bombings: The Ultimate Weapon?” International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), 7/8/2001 [6] Robert Pape, “Dying to Kill Us”, New York Times, 23/9/03 [7] Ehud Sprinzak, “Rational Fanatics”, Foreign Affairs September-October 2000, p.68 [8] Boaz Ganor, “The First Iraqi Suicide Bombing: A Hint of Things to Come?” International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), 30/3/03 [9] Yoram Schweitzer, “Suicide Terrorism: Development and Characteristics”, International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), 21/4/00 [10] Sprinzak, op.cit. [11] Jessica Stern, “Terror in the Name of God”, New York: HarperCollins, 2003 [12] Zedalis, op.cit. [13] Beyler, op.cit. [14] Yoni Fighel, “Palestinian ArabIslamic Jihad and Female Suicide Bombers”, International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), 6/10/03 [15] Zedalis, op.cit. [16] Fighel, op. cit. [17] Beyler, op.cit. [18] Stern, op.cit.