July 12, 2001
Letter From Gaza: The Martyr Strategy ®,
By Jeffrey Goldberg ®

The New Yorker ®
July 9, 2001 ®

1.Justifying the suicide attacks

Abdullah Shami, reported leader of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza: "'This is not suicide but martyrdom. It is the duty of Muslims.' Islamic Jihad bombers, Shami explained, are not men who seek suicide. 'We do not take depressed people. If there were a one-in-a-thousand chance that a person was suicidal, we would not allow him to martyr himself. In order to be a martyr bomber, you have to want to live.'"

"'All children who are born eventually die,' Shami said. 'And death is painful, except in the case of martyrs, who feel no pain as they commit the act that leads to their martyrdom.'"®

2.Children's Martyrs Games

"They were playing a game called 'shuhada', which means martyrs. The youngest son, Ahmed, who is three, played the 'shaheed', the martyr, and charged a make-believe Jewish bunker. The other boys made the sound of rifles firing, and Ahmed dropped to the ground and pretended to be dead. His brothers Mahmoud, who is five, and Muhammad, who is six, then carried his limp body down the alleyway, and performed a mock funeral. The game ended when Ahmed rose from his imaginary grave, shouted 'Allahu Akbar!' and giggled."

3.Excerpts of Marwan Barghoutti's speech about the Palestinian position

Marwan Barghouti, Fatah leader in the West Bank: "'We need one hundred percent of Gaza, one hundred percent of the West Bank, one hundred percent of East Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees,' he said. I pointed out that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak had, at the Camp David summit last year, offered the Palestinians a series of dramatic concessions: a free Gaza, around ninety percent of the West Bank, a capital in East Jerusalem, and so on. 'No!' Nothing less that a hundred percent is acceptable, he said. And if you get a hundred percent? Will that end the conflict? Barghouti smiled, and then said something impolitic for a Fatah man. 'Then we could talk about bigger things,' he said. Such as? 'I've always thought that a good idea would be one state for all the peoples,' he said. A secular democratic Palestine? 'We don't have to call it Palestine,' he replied. 'We can call it something else.'"