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The Phenomenon of Palestinian Suicide Terrorism
violence is simply impossible to ignore. As a result, the organizers of the attack
meet an additional goal in reaching a large audience, and in increasing the element
of fear they hope to instil on the target population. 51 The phrase that “terrorism is
theatre,” (Jenkins, 1975, p. 16) 52 seems to be particularly true and fitting in the case
of suicide terrorism. The Palestinian militant groups are acutely media-conscious
and the timing and positioning of attacks are carefully considered, in order to
achieve the maximum public impact. 53 It is indeed a manifestation of “propaganda
by deed”, securing the attention of the populous and providing a message through
violence. 54
Suicide attacks have an additional value in making the suicide bomber the ultimate
victim of the act, claiming moral high ground (Margalit, 2003). As people around
the world try to comprehend the motivations of such an act, there is the underlying
message that the present environment the perpetrators lived in is so humiliating that
death is preferable to life under such conditions. The fact that the attacker was
willing to trade his or her own life for those of the victims permits a sympathetic
audience to balance out the crime. 55 The key is desperation and the assumption that
suicide bombers have been driven to desperation by a brutal and humiliating
occupation which has deprived them of their humanity and any hope for a brighter
future or as Hanan Ashrawi put it “if you push the Palestinians into a corner, if you
drive them to desperation, there will be desperate acts”. 56 This position does indeed
earn the sympathy of people: 57
When healthy, beautiful, and intelligent young men and women set out to kill and be
killed, something is basically wrong in a world that has not heard their anguish cry
for justice. These young people deserve to live along with all those whom they have
caused to die. 58
All of a sudden the media finds superficial similarities between perpetrator and
victim implying some sort of commonality. 59 Women especially are seen as such
desperate figures and the case in point is the competing frames concerned to
describe those who use self-immolation as method of asymmetrical warfare, sway
public opinion and generate sympathy. Is the self-exploding person a “suicide
martyr” or a “homicide bomber”
Leaders of Palestinian terrorist organizations often justify the use of suicide
bombings as a tactic used by a weaker side against the stronger side, since the
violence between Israelis and Palestinians has often been referred to as an
asymmetric warfare. 60 In asymmetric warfare, the respective sides use those tactics
that are in their comparative advantage, in order to exploit their enemy’s relative
weaknesses and real or perceived vulnerabilities. With one side either incapable
(usually this is the weaker side) or unwilling (usually the stronger side) to use
tactics similar to its opponent (O’Brien and Nusbaum, 2000), finally the stronger
side will usually try to focus on the enemy’s inability to fight, while the weaker
side will attempt to break the enemy’s will to fight 61 by relying on at least some of
61