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The 'Little Satan'
In Gaza

Who is the Islamic Jihad?

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1 he "typical" Palestinian sui-
cide bomber appears to be
a poor, clinically depressed
young man with no
prospects, someone who wants to
die, and who blows himself up in
a crowd of Israelis so he can go
out a hero and martyr instead of
a loser. Personal distress, not Is-
lamic fanaticism, is evidently his
chief motivation. He is almost al-
ways a bachelor, said Israeli ex-
perts on terror.
No, just the opposite, said oth-
er Israeli experts: The Palestin-
ian suicide bomber seems to be a
person of extreme religious con-

mains a mystery, the organiza-
tion to which Messrs. Sukar and
Shahker belonged, Islamic Jihad,
is not.
Minuscule next to Hamas, Is-
lamic Jihad carries out fewer at-
tacks and enjoys a small fraction
of Hamas' support among the
Palestinian public. For these rea-
sons, Islamic Jihad gets a lot less
press. Israelis see it as a sort of
"Little Satan" to Hamas' "Great
Satan."
But man for man, the outfit
that just killed 19 Israelis and in-
jured more than 60 others is even
more lethal than Hamas, more

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viction, who apparently acts out
of Islamic zeal rather than psy-
chological despair or economic
destitution. He is often a family
man.
For what it's worth, Anwar
Sukar, 23, one of the two Gazan
terrorists in the Jan. 22 suicide
bombing near Netanya, was a
menial construction worker and
married. The other, Salah Shahk-
er, 25, was a physiotherapeutic
nurse, and single.
"We really don't know enough
about the personal background
of these types of people," ac-
knowledged Tel Aviv University
Professor Ariel Merari, probably
Israel's best known authority on
terror.
"It's hard to build a profile —
there are so few of them," added
Reuven Paz, a Haifa University
-esearcher on terror.
While the personality 01 the
Palestinian suicide bomber re-

AP/EYAL WARSHAVSKY

strictly focused on killing, said re-
searcher Paz. Besides nurturing
death squads, Hamas also runs
a broad network of mosques,
schools, clinics and charity insti-
tutions.
Islamic Jihad, by contrast, op-
erates only a few mosques. A
much greater proportion of its en-
ergy goes into planning and exe-
cuting attacks.
The organization's previous
suicide attack came in Novem-
ber, when an Islamic Jihad fol-
lower detonated explosives
strapped to his body near the
Jewish settlement of Netzarim
in Gaza, killing three Israeli sol-
diers. (The other major suicide
bombings of the last year, in Afu-
la, Hadera and on the Tel Aviv
bus, were all carried out by
Hamas.)
Islamic Jihad has "no more
than a ievv dozen ianatics who are
willing to carry out these kinds