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Edna Erez and Anat Berko
8 The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 led to a declaration of war against it by the
surrounding Arab countries. This war resulted in concentration of Palestinian refugees in
Gaza and the West Bank areas. It is these areas from which most of the study participants
came, although not all were residents of refugee camps (one interviewee was an Israeli
Arab, citizen of the State of Israel).
9 Yassar Arafat had often referred to the womb of the Palestinian woman as “the best
weapon of the Palestinian people,” praising the role of women in preserving the family,
producing children who become soldiers that fight Israel, and changing the demographic
structure of Israel. Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the former leader of Hamas (a fundamentalist
Muslim organization operating world-wide) who was assassinated by the IDF in March
2004, was of the opinion that women should realize their special potential to bear children
and refrain from participation in military operations (see personal interview with Yassin
in Berko, 2007). In regard to suicide bombing, Sheikh Yassin mentioned specifically that
women should not blow themselves up as there are enough men to do the job. He stated
that women’s appropriate role is in supporting the fighters. In the fundamentalist spirit of
Hamas, Yassin also declared that women must be accompanied by male chaperons when
they go out to wage jihad and fight. This ruling was later relaxed in light of the strategic
value of women in terrorist activities, as discussed later in the article.
10 See a recent article by a Palestinian writer and journalist, Adel Abu Hasham, who lives in
Saudi Arabia and who exalts the Palestinian mother as a “woman who got us accustomed
that she is a factory to produce men…” (MEMRI, 2005), In:.
http://www.memri.org.il/memri/LoadArticlePage.asplanguage=Hebrew&enttype=4&ent
id=1894
11 The onset of the second Intifada (uprising) in September 2000 has led to the reevaluation
of women’s role in terrorism by the two major movements of the Palestinian resistance,
Fattah and Hamas. In 2005 Hamas established a women’s unit. In January 2002, Yasir
Arafat had a mass meeting with Palestinian women and promised full equality between
men and women in Palestine. He called women to take part in the Palestinian armed
struggle. Arafat proclaimed that women are not just the "womb of the nation" but are "my
army of roses that will crush Israeli tanks" (See Kimmerling, 2003; Victor, 2003).
Similarly, Yassin has modified his restrictions on women waging jihad, first lifting the
requirement that they be accompanied by a male chaperon if the mission is for 24 hours
or less, and then embracing them without qualifications (Bloom, 2005, p. 150; Israeli,
2004). In August 2005, the Hamas has announced the establishment of a special unit of
women to fight Israel. However, these women – who are mostly wives or sisters of
Hamas activists – claimed that they have joined terrorism “not to compete with men but
to implement Allah’s orders” (Maariv, August 20, 2005). Most recently (June 2007), in
response to Israeli military attempts to stop the Palestinians from sending rockets to
Israeli southern towns, the Islamic Jihad has threatened to flood Israel with female suicide
bombers, see http://www.inn.co.il:80/News/Flash.aspx/185204.
12 See Israeli’s (2004) analysis of the Palestinian and Arab media regarding the role of
women in the Palestinian struggle; see also Hasso, 2005 and Patkin, 2004 for the media
construction of women suicide bombers.
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