Palestinian Women Martyrs
Against the Israeli Occupation
Wafa Idriss
January 27, 2002
Wafa Idriss was a nurse with the Red Crescent, the Palestinian version of the Red Cross. On January 27, 2002, the 28 year-old nurse walked into a shopping district on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and detonated a bomb killing herself, an Israeli and injuring 150 others. Red Crescent Society officials said that Idriss had been on the front line of clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops, tending to the wounded. About two weeks before her suicide operation, they said, she cradled a 15-year-old boy, Samir Kosbeh, who was hit in the head by a bullet fired by the Israelis soldiers. The clash took place just outside the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. The boy lapsed into a coma for a week, then died, two days before Idriss detonated her bomb. Wafa Idriss lived at the Amari Refugee Camp near Ramallah. .
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Dareen Abu Aysheh
February 27, 2002
The second suicide bombing operation by a Palestinian woman freedom fighter occurred on February 27, 2002. Dareen Abu Aysheh, 21-year-old, detonated a bomb at the Israeli Maccabim roadblock in West Ramallah (West Bank), wounding four Israelis. She was a student at Al-Najah University in Nablus, and came from the village of Beit Wazan, in the West Bank. She left a videotape, which was broadcast by the Arab satellite channel ANN, saying she "wanted to be the second woman – after Wafa Idriss – to carry out a martyr operation and take revenge for the blood of the martyrs and the desecration of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa mosque". Dareen highlighted the crucial role of Palestinian women in the resistance. "Let Sharon the coward know that every Palestinian woman will give birth to an army of martyrs, and her role will not only be confined to weeping over a son, brother or husband instead, she will become a martyr herself.".
Ayat Akhras
March 29, 2002
Ayat Akhras at 18 years old, has been the youngest Palestinian woman martyr. On March 29, 2002 she detonated a bomb inside a supermarket in the Kyriat Hayovel area of Jerusalem killing two Israelis and injuring 28 others. The day before she detonated the bomb at the supermarket, Ayat Akhras sat with her fiance and talked about graduating from high school and getting married in the summer.
She was engaged to Shali Abu Laban, and came from the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem.
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Andaleeb Takafka
April 12, 2002
On April 12, 2002, Andaleeb Takafka, a 20-year-old girl from Bethlehem, detonated a belt full of explosives at a Jerusalem bus stop, killing 6 Israelis, and injuring 104. In in an interview prior to her suicide mission, Andaleeb Takafka said "when you want to carry out such an attack, whether you are a man or a woman, you don’t think about the explosive belt or about your body being ripped into pieces. We are suffering. We are dying while we are still alive." Andaleeb Takafka was from Bethlehem.
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Hiba Daraghmeh
May 19, 2003
Nineteen-year-old Hiba Daraghmeh detonated a belt filled with explosives that was strapped to her waist killing herself and three Israelis and injuring 93 others outside the Amakim Shopping Mall in Afula in northern Israel. The shy 19-year-old student of English literature never spoke to men and avoided drinking coffee or tea at the cafeteria of Al Quds Open University in her home town of Tubas in the West Bank. All of her friends were women. Even her cousin, Murad Daraghmeh, 20, also a student at Al Quds, said "I never saw her face. I never talked to her. I never shook hands with her." The first time the world saw her young face unveiled was in an Islamic Jihad poster released after her death.
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Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat
October 4, 2003
On October 4, 2003, Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, a 29 year old attorney from Jenin detonated a bomb in a restaurant in Haifa, Israel killing herself, 19 Israelis and injuring 50 others. Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat wrapped her waist with explosives and fought her way past a security guard at a restaurant. Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat was a single woman whose younger brother Fadi, a 25-year-old, and older cousin, 34-year-old Salah had been killed by Israeli forces in the raid on Jenin in June of 2003. Her family said she did not tell anyone where she was going and they assumed she was on her way to the law office in Jenin where she worked.
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Reem Salih al-Rayasha
January 14, 2004
On the morning of January 14, 2004, a freedom fighter of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a 21 year old mother of two children, detonated a bomb at the Erez border check point between Israel and the Gaza Strip killing four Israeli soldiers. The female Palestinian martyr, Reem Salih al-Rayasha of Gaza City, was a university student with two children, ages 1 and 4 whom she loved dearly. She made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and independence of the Palestinian people.
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Zeinab Abu Salem
September 22, 2004
Zeinab Abu Salem is the eighth Palestinian woman martyr to carry out a suicide bombing mission in an effort to liberate Palestine. Abu Salem, age 18, blew herself up near a hitch-hiking post in Jerusalem killing two Israeli border police and wounding 17 others. The blast tore through the mainly Jewish district of French Hill in Arab East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Relatives of Zeinab Abu Salem had little time to absorb the shock. They rushed to empty the family home in the Palestinian refugee camp of Askar near the West Bank city of Nablus, expecting Israeli bulldozers to soon come to demolish it. "I don't know what's happening," said Abu Salem's 12-year-old brother Tarek, in disbelief that his sister had died. "I don't know where she is. She isn't at home." Family members said they had known nothing of Abu Salem's plans for the attack.
Her father Ali, recovering from surgery to open clogged arteries, collapsed and was taken to hospital after learning of his daughter's death. Relatives said Abu Salem had just passed high school graduation exams and had spoken of entering university. Minutes later, Abu Salem's mother also passed out and was rushed to a local hospital. "Oppression is everywhere," said her uncle Mustafa Shinawi, 55. "Every Palestinian finds his own suitable way to protest the Israeli oppression."
Mervat Masaoud
November 6, 2006
Two days after the Israeli army had fired upon a group of Palestinian mothers on their way to the Beit Hanoun Mosque killing two, 18 year old Mervat Masaoud decided she had enough. She strapped on explosives to her waist and strode defiantly toward an Israeli army checkpoint and blew herself up injuring one Zionist soldier. Mervat Masaoud, was a student at the Islamic University of Gaza. In the six days before she carried out her mission, the Zionist occupation army had killed 50 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in the northern Gaza
town of Beit Hanoun. The group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the mission and released a videotape of the tall, thin teenager holding the Koran and an M-16 rifle while smiling and stating calmly her intention to die fighting Israel. Asking forgiveness of her parents, she said, "I love you very much, but I love Palestine and God more." Mervat Masaoud is the ninth Palestinian woman martyr.
Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar
November 23, 2006
Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar is the oldest Palestinian Woman Martyr to date. She was 57 years old when she decided to give up her life for the liberation of the Palestinian people. Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar was the mother of 9 and grandmother of 41 children. She was one of the Palestinian women who bravely formed a human shield around a Mosque in Beit Hanun to save a number of Palestinian men trapped inside who were being shelled by Zionist soldiers on November 3. Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar made her decision to carry out the suicide mission against the Zionist occupiers two weeks after the Israeli shelling in the Gaza town of Beit Hanun left 19 Palestinians, mostly women and children, dead. Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar approached a group of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, detonated explosive strapped around her waist and left 5 Zionist soldiers wounded. She was from the town of Jabaliya.
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