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Born
in 1984,
Wafa al-Bis was a resident
of the the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza when, in 2005, she attempted
unsuccessfully to carry out a suicide bombing at an Israeli hospital
in the city of Beer Sheva. Al-Bis herself had previously been a
patient at that same hospital, having received treatment there, free of
charge, for burns she had suffered when a gas tank exploded in a
cooking accident. While al-Bis was on her way to carry out the 2005 terrorist mission, Israeli
soldiers, suspicious of her intentions, stopped
the young woman at the Erez crossing point between Gaza and Israel. Al-Bis, sensing that she was about to be apprehended, immediately tried to detonate her explosive belt. But the device failed to
blow up, and al-Bis was arrested and sentenced to 12
years in an Israeli prison.
“I had wanted to be a
martyr since I was a kid,” the incarcerated al-Bis later explained. Asked if she
would ever again attempt to carry out such a mission if an opportunity were to present itself, she replied
without hesitation: “Of course. Why not? This is an honorable thing
and I would be a suicide bomber three times over if I could.” “It
was my dream to be a martyr,” al-Bis said
on another occasion, “but God didn’t grant it.” Undergirding al-Bis' jihadist resolve was her firm conviction
that “Palestine
will never be liberated through negotiations,” but only through
violence.
From
an early age, al-Bis had been encouraged
by her parents to become a suicide bomber. “Jihad
is Jihad, it’s an honourable thing,” her mother declared
in the aftermath of the young woman's aborted 2005 attempt. “I was proud of
her.”
In
October 2011, al-Bis was one of more than 1,000 incarcerated Palestinian
terrorists and militants released by Israel as part of a
prisoner swap in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. “I hope you will
walk the same path we took, and God willing, we will see some of you
as martyrs,” al-Bis told
a crowd of Palestinian schoolchildren who had come to cheer her return
home. In response, the children chanted, “We will give souls and
blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you,
Palestine.”
This profile is adapted, in part,from "Voices of Palestine: Wafa al-Bis," by Jacob Laksin (November 11, 2011).
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