Some hope that suicide bombings will be curtailed?
Palestinians begin to turn against suicide bombings
By PAUL ADAMS
Wednesday, November 27, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A1
BETHLEHEM -- When Israeli troops begin to loosen their grip on a Palestinian city, as they did in Bethlehem this week, the first people into the streets are always boys.
In front of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, marking the traditional birthplace of Jesus, gangs of street urchins gathered, practising with the slingshots they use to hit Israeli jeeps and tanks.
Some of the boys chanted "Islamic Jihad," the name of the Palestinian group that has claimed responsibility for ambushes and suicide attacks, including the bombing of a Jerusalem bus this month that killed 11 people, including several schoolchildren.
But if the face of Palestinian resistance is the ubiquitous stone thrower, the attitude of ordinary West Bank residents appears to be turning against the militants.
Slowly and quietly in cities like Bethlehem, more and more Palestinians are beginning to speak out against the suicide-bombing campaign that has inspired young men like the stone throwers but done little for their people.
As recently as a year ago, 70 per cent of Palestinians supported suicide bombings, according to Khalid Shikaki, a respected Palestinian pollster. However, with the grim reality of Israeli reoccupation beginning in earnest last spring, that has changed.
"There is [now] an almost equal division in society between those who support and those who oppose attacks on civilians under the current conditions," Dr. Shikaki said in an interview this week.
"I hate the bombing on both sides -- especially the children," said Elizabeth Jacoman, standing within sight of the Church of the Nativity. She said that because the Israelis invariably retaliate, Palestinians also become victims of the suicide bombers. "The bombers should think about their families and their neighbours."
For the first time since the intifada began two years ago, a public debate has begun among Palestinian opinion makers about the tactics of violence.
At the one end, there is a growing minority -- including people such as the head of Al Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, and the former interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh -- who call for a complete end to armed conflict and a turn to non-violent civil disobedience.
At the other extreme, militant organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas and some offshoots of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement insist that any Israeli is a legitimate military target.
The position of Mr. Arafat, who leads the Palestinian Authority, has been at best equivocal. At times, he has condemned the suicide attacks, but so limply as to lead many to believe he condoned them. His Fatah faction recently tried, and failed, to negotiate with Hamas a suspension of attacks against civilians.
This week, the central committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which he also leads, called for an end to "all military actions, particularly against Israeli civilians," apparently in the hope of influencing the Israeli election campaign now underway.
Amidst this cacophony of voices, many Palestinians seem to be settling on a middling position.
"So many Palestinians have lost their children in Israeli attacks, that we have lost our feelings for children on the other side," said Saber Bouja, a member of the Palestinian Tourist Police that guard Bethlehem's religious shrines in happier times. "Personally I am against the killing of civilians on both sides."
The most recent wave of attacks on Israelis may reflect the shifting views. The first was a shooting on a kibbutz in northern Israel, during which a mother and her two children were murdered in their beds. That was followed by an ambush by Palestinian militants on Israeli soldiers and armed security guards in the West Bank city of Hebron. Finally, there was the suicide bombing on the Jerusalem bus.
Some Palestinians saw all these attacks as legitimate acts of armed struggle. But many like Mr. Bouja make a distinction between the Hebron attack, which he applauded, and the two attacks in which civilians died, which he condemned. "It was a military attack -- fighters against soldiers," he said of the Hebron ambush. "It was a morale booster."
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