A Different Bomb

Nahariya suicide bomber was deadly — to Israel's Jewish Arabrelations.

DAVID LANDAU

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem

D

epressed but determined
after nearly a year of vio-
lent conflict with the
Palestinians, Israelis this
week suffered a new trauma: A suicide
bomber who took three innocent lives
at a provincial railway station on
Sunday was a fellow citizen.
Mohammed Shaker Habeishi, who
was born in Acre and lived for years in
the Galilee village of Abu Snan, was
no Palestinian refugee from the West
Bank or Gaza Strip, seething with
resentment against the Jewish state for
driving his family out.
Instead, Habeishi was a lifelong citi-
zen of Israel, a well-to-do, middle-aged
merchant with three wives and six
children, who barely a year ago had
run for mayor of his bustling Druse-
Muslim village.
On Sunday morning, he blew him-
self up outside the train station in
Nahariya, a small city along Israel's
northern coast. His random victims
were three travelers from Jerusalem —
an artist, an architect and a soldier
who planned to be a musician. At least
80 more people were wounded.
Compounding the shock that swept
the country was television footage
released by Hamas that showed
Habeishi, before the attack, coldly
explaining his intention to commit a
"religious" self-sacrifice.
The images, filmed against a back-
ground of green and white religious slo-
gans and with the hero wearing a green
and white headband, were identical to
many shown before. Only this time,
the suicide murderer was not some
half-crazed stripling, but a man who
grew to maturity within Israeli society.

Islamic Movement

Habeishi was active in Israel's Islamic
Movement, a religious and political
movement that has grown enormously
in popularity and political power in
the Arab sector in recent years.
The leader of its northern, more
radical wing, Sheikh Ra'id Salah was
among the Israeli Arab religious and

9/14
2001

22

political figures who immediately con-
demned the Nahariya bombing. "We
act within the rules of Israeli law and
Israeli democracy," Salah's spokesman
declared.
Arab members of Knesset, often
accused of siding with the Palestinians
in the current struggle, also spoke out
against the wanton killing of inno-
cents. They insisted that the killer was
"a wild weed" in Israel's Arab commu-
nity; and warned against attempts by
the Jewish majority to tar Israel's one
million-plus Arab community with the
brush of betrayal.
All these condemnations were duly
reported in the media. But so were
comments by kids on the streets of
Arab towns and villages to the effect
that Habeishi was a shaheed, a reli-
gious martyr who would go to heaven.
On Tuesday, Abdel Malek
Dahamshe, the most prominent
Islamicist in the Knesset, pointedly
refused to deny in a radio interview
that the Nahariya bomber was a mar-
tyr. That was for the religious authori-
ties to rule upon, Dahamshe insisted,
while rehearsing his condemnation of
the bombing itself and the taking of
innocent lives.
Habeishi's action inevitably remind-
ed Israeli Jews of the dreadful week
that began on Rosh Hashanah a year
ago, when Arab rioters in the Galilee
blocked main highways, attacked
Jewish motorists and seemed briefly to
augur a full-fledged mass rebellion.
Badly trained and ill-deployed police
units sometimes used live ammunition
to combat the flying stones and burn-
ing fires, and 13 Arab citizens died.
Throughout that week, the nascent
Palestinian intifada (uprising) raged
through the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, pitting Palestinian rioters against
the Israeli army. But it is the explosion
of violence inside Israel proper, with
its terrifying potential, that Israelis
remember to this day.
The government set up a commis-
sion of inquiry under Supreme Court
Justice Theodor Orr to examine the
events of that week. Its hearings still
continue in an emotion-filled court-
room in Jerusalem, with witnesses giv-
ing their evidence behind thick glass
after Arabs in the audience several

times attacked testifying policemen.
Many Israeli Jews and Arabs shared
the hope that the commission of
inquiry would provide a cathartic out-
let for the bitterness and anger and
help the two communities rebuild
their fractured coexistence.
The bombing in Nahariya has dealt
a blow to those hopes, reawakening on
the Jewish side the fear, trepidation
and suspicion unleashed by last year's
violence. Moreover, the long year of
Palestinian violence, with its constant
escalation and growing casualty toll,
has provided fertile ground for such
fears and suspicions to take root.

❑

A man lights a candle
at the train station
in Nahariya on Monday
to honor those killed and
wounded a day earlier
in a suicide bomb attack.

