From Occupied Palestine

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign

Blowing up an assumption
ROBERT A. PAPE
New York Times, 18 May 2005

The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27). Even among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.

Third parties
GRAHAM USHER
al-Ahram Weekly, 3-9 March 2005

Jerusalem -- On 25 February a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis and wounded 50 others outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv. It was the first attack inside Israel since 1 November. It also brought to a close the period of calm that followed Mahmoud Abbas's ceasefire declaration at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on 8 February.

Calm is relative of course. Since 1 November, 170 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli army and settlers. Twenty-five have been slain since Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) announced a de facto moratorium on military operations on 23 January.

IDF unit struck hard by Tel Aviv bomber
STAFF
Jerusalem Post.com, 26 February 2005 [updated 18:58]

Friday night's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv struck an IDF combat unit especially hard. The unit was all invited to celebrate a party for one of its soldiers, and stood at the entrance to the 'Stage' club when the bomber detonated his bomb-belt.

The platoon commander, Eran Cohen, told Army Radio, "There were 13 of us there. All the fatalities are from our unit. Many more were wounded."

The way things are and the need for a new disrespect
TED HONDERICH
Edinburgh International Book Festival, 8 September 2004

The neo-Zionists, as distinct from Zionists like me, and maybe you, are still killing the passers-by while aiming at the terrorists. The terrorists have been killing the occupiers of their homeland, trying to save a little more of it for its people. If you talk about the state-terrorism of neo-Zionism, and assert the moral right of the Palestinians against it, such a right as is implicitly and explicitly claimed by neo-Zionism with respect to its own terrorism, you're an anti-Semite.

Where have all the bombers gone?
ERIK SCHECHTER
Jerusalem Post, 6 August 2004

Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin was supposed to have been followed by rivers of blood on Israel's streets. It didn't happen. Here is why.

Rifat Mukdi, 25, had no previous history with Palestinian terrorist organizations and, despite both intifadas, all of his nine brothers and sisters are alive and well. Yet one day in February 2002, he told his cousin, a member of Hamas, that he wanted to become a martyr.

Palestinian parents' nightmare in Nablus
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 1 August 2004

Five minors from Nablus have been arrested in recent months, suspected of having been sent to carry out attacks of some kind - two boys and three girls aged 15 and under. Nobody is able to control the youngsters being recruited for suicide missions.

Bomber's family hits out at Islamic Jihad
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 16 January 2004

The family of a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber, who died in a futile attempt to kill Israelis this week, has made unusual public criticism of the men who recruit human bombs.

The parents of 17-year-old Iyad al-Masri accused Islamic Jihad of exploiting his grief following the killing of a brother and a cousin by the Israeli army days earlier.

'God gave me two children and I loved them so much'
The suicide message of a mother who left home to kill
JUSTIN HUGGLER
Independent, 15 January 2004

Erez border crossing, Gaza Strip -- In the video she left before she died, Reem al-Riashi said she had dreamt of becoming a "martyr", that she wanted pieces of her body to fly like "deadly shrapnel".

Yesterday they were sponging up her body parts from the floor, indistinguishable from the flesh of the four other people she murdered when she detonated the bomb in her vest.

Human-bomb mother kills four Israelis at Gaza checkpoint
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 15 January 2004

A 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two small children, pretending to be disabled, killed four Israelis at a Gaza border crossing yesterday after duping soldiers into allowing her a personal security check rather than going through a metal detector.

The Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade said the attack by Reem Riyashi, from Gaza City, was a joint operation in revenge for weeks of Israeli incursions into West Bank cities that have left about 25 Palestinians dead.