Palestinian arrested in suicide bomb plot now works for peace
TULKARM, West Bank — She knew that once she put on the explosive belt, there would be no turning back. She knew it would rip her limb from limb, reducing her to a bloody pulp. She knew it would leave her only daughter an orphan.
But she also knew this: It would kill Israelis. Hopefully, a lot of them. And that was reason enough to do it.
Shifa al-Qudsi was a suicide bomber, or at least tried to be. A Palestinian hairdresser driven to anger, despair and hopelessness, she volunteered to carry out an attack on Israelis that would strike a blow, she thought, for her beleaguered people. “I wanted to seek revenge,” she said.
But she was arrested before she could act and today, after six years in an Israeli prison, Qudsi has transformed herself from a would-be deliverer of death into a messenger of peace. Now working with a group that brings Palestinians and Israelis together to advocate an end to the conflict between their peoples, she tries to channel the rage that took her to the brink into a nonviolent movement for change.
Qudsi offers a window into the world of terrorism amid a fresh wave of attacks by Palestinians. Mainly wielding knives rather than bombs, these new generation attackers are nonetheless also committing suicide for their cause, since they know they are likely to be shot by Israeli soldiers.
Qudsi understands the kind of thinking that makes sacrificing oneself seem like a rational response to deep feelings of grievance. “They occupy your home, your land, they kill your relatives and your people — of course you’re upset,” she said. “You have no other option but to seek revenge.”
Now 40, she smoked as she reflected on her life in this corner of the West Bank occupied by Israeli forces for nearly 50 years. Looking back, she still embraces the resentment if not the methodology.
“I don’t feel bad that I made that decision,” she said of her brush with self-immolation. “But now I reject suicide attacks. God decides when we will live and when we will die. Now my jihad is to send out a message to the world. The world must know the Palestinians’ land is occupied. We are people who want peace, just peace.”
She has come to know Israelis who share her views as part of Combatants for Peace, an organization of former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters reaching across lines that separate them. “I want to stop the bloodshed,” Qudsi said.
The group is featured in a new documentary, “Disturbing the Peace.” But old suspicions die hard, and Qudsi was not permitted by the Israeli authorities to attend the Jerusalem premiere in July, nor allowed to travel to the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to obtain a visa to attend a showing early this month at the Hamptons International Film Festival on Long Island. The movie will debut in New York City on Nov. 11, and she still hopes to attend.
If viewed warily by the Israeli authorities, Qudsi is not accepted by everyone at home either. Palestinian attackers are celebrated in the West Bank as martyrs, and their families receive compensation from the Palestinian Authority. Cooperation with Israelis, even like-minded ones, is often deemed betrayal.
After the second intifada, or uprising, began in 2000, the conflict found her. Two cousins were shot. The sound of explosions gave her daughter nightmares. Her brother, Mahmoud Adnan al-Qudsi, tried to mount a suicide attack, only to be arrested.
The night before her attack in April 2002, Israeli security forces, tipped to the plan, burst into her house. According to the Israeli authorities, Qudsi was interrogated for three days before being charged and convicted of conspiracy to commit premeditated killing and possession of explosives. She said she was beaten in prison.
While locked up, Qudsi rethought her course. Although still angry at Israelis, she began reading the writings of Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. She met a female Israeli prison guard who treated her with respect. “That’s what made me feel that not every Israeli is the same,” she said.
Released in 2008, she joined Combatants for Peace. Among those she met was Chen Alon, an Israeli military officer who spent time in jail after refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
Alon was shocked by her story. “I could identify with everything except the decision — the terror, the hopelessness, the idea that this was the only thing that could provide a future for her daughter,” said Alon, now a theater director and lecturer at Tel Aviv University. “I don’t accept it, but I can understand it.”
“I told her that a suicide attack is a crazy attack,” he continued. “And she told me right in front of the group, ‘You’re saying that because you have tanks and helicopters. You think this because you can bomb us from the air. But when you don’t have anything in hand to protect yourself, these belts are the only weapon we have.’ ”
“That,” he added, “made me think, ‘Wow, I didn’t think about it this way.’ ”
“Now I reject suicide attacks. God decides when we will live and when we will die.” Shifa al-Qudsi