The New York Times · 9 February 2002

CP-2002-096

Israelis Declare Arab Woman Was in Fact a Suicide Bomber

By JAMES BENNET

Scan 572 × 1084 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

TEL AVIV, Feb. 8 — An Israeli government investigation has concluded that a Palestinian woman who died when she detonated a huge explosion in downtown Jerusalem on Jan. 28 was in fact a suicide bomber, a senior Israeli military official said here today.

In the aftermath of the explosion, in the busy shopping district of Jaffa Road, it was not clear if the woman had intended to plant the bomb and escape or to blow herself up. The blast also killed an 81-year-old Israeli man and wounded many other bystanders.

But the senior military official said there was no question that the Palestinian, Wafa Idris, 28, was the first female suicide bomber to strike inside Israel. “She was a suicide bomber,” he said. “We know this now.” Ms.

Idris, a resident of the Amari refugee camp just north of Jerusalem, was a volunteer medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society and an activist with Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction. The Fatah-linked group that claimed responsibility for the attack, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, described her as a “martyr,” implying that she had intended to die.

But her friends, members of her family and the Israeli police said they were not so sure. Ms. Idris left no note and no “martyr video” other suicide bombers have done. A spokesman for the Israeli police had no immediate comment on the disclosure that Ms. Idris was a suicide bomber. Ms.

Idris was identified by a shoe saleswoman, Rivka Reuven, as having examined merchandise in her store moments before stepping outside to detonate the bomb. Ms. Reuven said the bomber was holding a green nylon bag, slug over one shoulder and cradled with one hand. “Her look was not from this earth,” Ms. Reuven said.

“She was like a zombie. like she was drugged.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from the slide scan by a reader working off magnified crops, not by optical character recognition. The clipping carries no masthead and no folio, and the newspaper is not printed on it; the photograph is credited to the Associated Press, which identifies the picture’s source and not the paper. That attribution rests on the hand-typed slide label. The date is derived from the printed dateline, “TEL AVIV, Feb. 8”, with the year fixed by the article’s own content, the Jaffa Road bombing of 28 January and the conflict in its seventeenth month. Two printed errors are kept as set: “a green nylon bag, slug over one shoulder”, and “She was like a zombie. like she was drugged.” Note that slide 29 and slide 30 both carry a label reading 9 February 2002; this is the record whose own dateline supports that date.

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