Saturday, Aug 30, 2008
The woman who blew up herself and an Israeli man last Sunday was also a paramedic who once dedicated herself to saving lives.
Jan 31, 2002 | "I saw the head of a girl with long black hair lying in the street," said Aaron Pinsker, still trembling hours after an explosion last Sunday killed one Israeli and wounded scores of others. "I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it was a chicken or some animal, but when I looked closer it was clearly a girl. The body I couldn't see anywhere, though." Pinsker, the owner of Pinsker Furniture on Jaffa Road, looked once more at the carnage caused by the blast, and murmured again: "A girl."
What Pinsker saw, it now turns out, were the remains of the Palestinian bomber responsible for the blast in the heart of the city -- the first woman to commit such an act. Palestinian security services Tuesday night informed the family of 27-year-old Wafa Idris, from the Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, that she was the mystery woman who died at the center of the explosion in Jerusalem. She was an activist in the Fatah movement, a divorcee and a paramedic in the Palestinian Red Crescent Society who had been missing since Sunday. Astonishing as the information was, Idris' family didn't question it.
"I know why she did it," says Wafa's older brother Khalil. He was seated on a plastic chair in the bare courtyard of the Amari camp's youth club, receiving the condolences of relatives and friends. "All the terrible things she saw when she worked for the ambulance service, the body parts, the children who were shot, the pregnant women who lost their babies at Israeli checkpoints, it is enough of a motive for any reasonable person." Wafa has honored the family, says Khalil.
Across town in the well-equipped, modern office of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Ramallah, the mood is not one of acceptance. "It is ridiculous, ridiculous that it has come to this," says Hossam Sharkawi, the visibly shaken coordinator of Emergency Response Services. "It is appalling, it goes against all our principles. We oppose all killings of civilians, we are here to save lives, Palestinians and Israelis equally."
Wafa was one of the most dedicated volunteers over the past two and a half years, says Sharkawi. "She came every Friday, which is our peak time during the intifada because of the riots after prayer. When there were riots during the week she would volunteer for two or three days in a row."
Sharkawi adds that he is aware of the traumas that the work can cause, but he declines to connect Wafa's experiences as a volunteer to the bombing. The rejection of such a connnection is crucial, considering that Idris' actions could very well put the organization at risk. Sharkawi, and other Red Crescent administrators, are anxious to stifle the suggestion that rescuers might turn into bombers as a result of their difficult jobs.
"Everybody who has been out there potentially suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder," says Sharkawi. The Red Crescent set up a trauma program, last June, to screen and counsel its emergency personnel and volunteers. "Obviously the emphasis is on staff more than on volunteers," he says, "but it is impossible to say if her experiences in the ambulance service contributed to her decision to carry out her action."
In the Amari refugee camp, Wafa Idris' family also rejects the idea that Wafa was somehow depressed or overcome by grief as a result of her volunteer work. Instead, they are quick to enumerate the humiliations that Wafa allegedly suffered at the hands of the Israelis. She was hit by rubber bullets three times, and during the first intifada, which started in 1987, the Israelis beat her up, they say. Her brother Khalil says he served eight years in an Israeli prison for being a member of Fatah, which was still banned back then. "She came to see me whenever she could," he says. Wafa was on the camp's women's committee during the first intifada, helping to distribute food at times of curfew, offering social support and looking after prisoners' families, her relatives say.
Get Salon in your mailbox!