Palestine's latest suicide bomber an ideal recruit

By PHIL REEVES

NABLUS - In March an unknown and unremarkable Palestinian schoolboy called Imad Kamel al-Zbaidi had his 18th birthday.

He knew then - and probably revelled in the thought - that his adult life would not last long. Five weeks later it was over.

On April 22 he calmly left the slum that passed for his home in the West Bank city of Nablus after telling his mother, Nehaya, that he was going to spend the night at a mosque.

He was extremely devout, so the family thought nothing of his absence. Nor, at the time, did they see anything strange in the way he sat down before departing and gazed intently and silently at them for five minutes.

Then he walked out, for ever.

Just after 9 am the next day he was seen at a bus stop in Kfar Saba, an Israeli town 6km from the border with the occupied West Bank. Despite the warmth of the day he was wearing a ragged jacket. Beneath it was a bomb packed with nails.

The explosion came at the height of the morning rush-hour, just as a bus pulled up. It killed Dr Mario Goldin, aged 52, an Israeli physician who was the widely respected head of a hospital unit.

The bomb injured 50 people and blew Imad al-Zbaidi to pieces, sealing his place as the youngest suicide bomber from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam battalions, the paramilitary wing of the militant movement Hamas.

Six suicide bombers have struck since the start of the Palestinian intifada in September, three of them inside Israel. Hamas has claimed five and says it has five more in position. So far fatalities have been miraculously low - four Israelis have died, although scores were injured, some seriously.

But fears of a massacre - a repetition of the nightmare of 1996, when 44 people were killed in two suicide bombings in Jerusalem within two months - gnaw away at Israelis, and at the promise of their Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to make them secure.

This is precisely what the men from Hamas intend. Fifty-three years after the Jewish state was created, young Arabs remain willing to die in the blind conviction that these atrocities are holy acts which guarantee the perpetrators a place in paradise and help to drive Jews from Arab land.

Imad al-Zbaidi was typical. Studies by the Israel-based International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism show that Hamas suicide bombers tend to be young, single, intensely religious and poor. He was all of these.

He was also a loner whose only interests were computers, maths and the Koran, and so shy he could hardly bring himself to speak to his teachers.

Relatives - six of whom spoke to the Independent - say he rarely spoke.

"If I didn't ask him a question, he would say nothing," said his father, Kamel, a 68-year-old shop owner. "He had no friends."

Such characteristics are valued by Hamas recruiters. Deep emotional attachments and an outgoing nature could compromise the group's security. The silent, studious Imad al-Zbaidi met the job description.

Yet members of his family say they were taken entirely by surprise by what he did. They knew the lad was angry about the occupation. But so is everyone in Nablus.

They remember that when he was 9 he was struck by a Jewish settler in Nablus, a humiliating assault, and wonder if this played a part.

They acknowledge, too, that the family was struggling financially, not least because of Israel's blockade of the occupied territories. They say that in the evenings Imad al-Zbaidi used to work on the family sewing machine, turning out aprons for sale in his father's shop.

But his relatives say they had no inkling that he had joined Hamas, let alone that he was a "lieutenant" - the vaunt made by the posters pasted up around Nablus after his death.

From these stare out a hauntingly youthful lad. The forefinger of his right hand is raised, giving the impression of a wise, brave instructor rather than a gullible, confused teenager who was persuaded to become a killer.

His relatives sat in mourning, the women in one house, the men in another. Solemn bearded men from Hamas greeted visitors at the door while his father, bewildered, sat on a plastic chair inside. The Hamas men gravely handed out sweets, as is the tradition at a "martyr's" wake, to indicate a celebration rather than a singularly miserable moment in a long conflict.

Yet his relatives were obviously struggling to make sense of it all. They trotted out the official guff - the boy was a hero now sure to be in Heaven. They will doubtless get payouts from Hamas' charitable system, which helps families of "martyrs" and thus nurtures its support.

But, beneath the rhetoric, there was grief and unease. Questions about randomly blowing up Israeli civilians on their own territory made them indignant.

"We are against killing civilians," said his aunt, Salwa. "But every day the Israelis kill Palestinian children. They burn our hearts. We want them to suffer the same thing."

In the end, she explained, it boils down to an eye for an eye.

This individual confusion is mirrored by a debate inside Islam over whether suicide bombings are legitimate.

Islam views suicide as a sin, a view recently enforced by the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, who declared there was "no religious justification" for suicide attacks. He was swiftly contradicted by an Egyptian scholar, Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi, who pronounced them legitimate.

But this high-minded theology debate is a long way from the streets of Nablus.

Outside the young killer's wake stood a small Palestinian boy, no more than 10 years old. He was wearing a Hamas T-shirt and a Hamas headband - gifts from the guerrillas.

Will he be next?

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