Kitchen
knives. Meat cleavers. Scissors. Stones. The current weapons of choice used by
Palestinians in this latest wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank. At
the time of writing, 22 Israelis, 150 Palestinians, an American and an Eritrean
have been killed. In the past three months, there have been 105 stabbings – and many of the
perpetrators have been women. With murmurings that this wave of violence
constitutes a new uprising – a third intifada – I believe that if this is indeed a
third intifada, it is very different than the two previous ones: it is less
orchestrated – and more intimate. An
Intimate Intifada.
As
of now, sixteen of the assailants in this “intimate” intifada have been women. Seven
of these women were seen stabbing Jewish men in public spaces, seven of them
were apprehended before the attempted stabbing, one of them attempted a car
ramming and one of them had an explosive device in her car that detonated
early. The disturbing novelty of this intifada is not that women are capable of
engaging in violence – women have willingly and passionately committed acts of
terrorism for centuries, as has been thoroughly researched by terrorism
scholars Mia Bloom and Yoram Schweitzer – but the novelty here
is the intimacy of these attacks.
It
is intimate because the weapon of choice, knives, requires a physical closeness
between the attacker and the victim. Unlike in suicide terror or bomb attacks,
there is no physical distance that shields the killer from the eyes of the
doomed. It is intimate because its agents are not jihadi foot soldiers but instead
self-motivated individuals, acting on their own agency.
These
sixteen women assailants embody two main traits: they are young; twelve of the sixteen
are under the age of 23, the youngest being 14; and they are self-motivated,
acting as ‘lone-wolves.’ These woman were born into the post Oslo Accords era. Born
into a time with the continued presence of the occupation and little to no
meaningful dialogue or resolution between Israel and Palestine on the table. While
I do not condone this violence, the hopelessness and desperation felt by the
assailants are important dimensions to it.
Why
are such numbers of Palestinian women suddenly up arms?
The
first intifada, 1987-1993, did not have a call to action among women. Instead,
as Mira Tzoreff argues, women were
tasked with being the “birthers” of the revolution, the cultivators, the
mothers of the sons who would carry out the attacks. The second intifada,
2000-2005, brought about the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, Wafa
Idris. It brought about direct female engagement in the violent acts, in the
terror. As suggested by Yoram Schweitzer, these women were
mostly in their 20s, unmarried or divorced, and childless. It is believed that
these women were looking for some way to absolve the shame and/or dishonor they
brought upon themselves and their families. Martyrdom proved to be a way to
combat their dishonor or shame.
What makes the women tick?
I
believe that one of the reasons we are seeing an escalation of women’s
involvement in this intifada is because the nature of the attacks require
little to no planning. A stabbing with a kitchen knife is something an
individual can plan without needing the infrastructure of a terrorist organization.
Yet I also believe the nature of the attacks is directly related to the desperation
many Palestinians, especially women, who bear the main burden, are feeling and
the idea that desperate times call for desperate measures. Women are acting
because they are desperate to change their situation; women act because they
believe that their male counterparts are not doing enough in the fight against
the occupation.
As
most assailants were killed on site, little is known about what truly led them
to engage in this intimate form of violence, what led them to pick up their knives.
From the little we know we can only put together an incomplete mosaic of
different motivations.
We
only really understand two backstories. The first is of Isra’ ‘Abed who committed the
Afula attack on October 9th.
She was apprehended for what was perceived to be brandishing a knife at
a local bus station. However, law enforcement soon concluded that she, in fact,
wanted to be caught and induce the police to shoot her. Murder by suicide. She
is a divorced mother who suffers from mental illness, has a history of
hospitalizations and lost custody of her child after attempting suicide. She
posed as a terrorist, hoping and possibly knowing, what reaction it would cause.
'Awakening,'
by Akrem Boutora, has been widely shared by Palestinian
activists. Photo: Haaretz
On
the opposite end of the spectrum, Rasha Ahmad Hamed ‘Oweissi perpetrated the
attempted stabbing in Qalqilia on November 9th. Rasha was shot and
killed after attempting a stabbing at a checkpoint and left behind a suicide note. In this note, she
highlights her motivations for the attack: “My dear
mother, I don’t know what is happening. I just know that I’ve reached the end
of the road. And this is the road that I chose with full consciousness. In
defense of my homeland, the young men and women, I cannot bear what I see
anymore. But what I know is that I can’t take it anymore…Forgive me for
everything, I have nothing else but this path. I am sorry for this departure.”
Knife
and suicide note found on Rasha Ahmad Hamed ‘Oweissi in attempted stabbing 9 November 2015. Photo: Israel Ministry of Defense
While these two women represent attempted stabbings and there is
an understanding of why they wanted to engage or be perceived as engaging in
this violence, it is important to remember that there are assailants who use
being a woman to their advantage. The November 8th attack in Beitar Illit (south of
Jerusalem) caught Halawa Alian on camera engaging in
several minutes of conversation with an Israeli security guard before
ultimately reaching into her purse, pulling out a knife and stabbing him.
And Still…
In
October, Hamas released a graphic 45-second video tutorial instructing
Palestinians how to stab a Jew. In this video, actors portrayed two religious
Jews cornered by a Palestinian man and stabbed to death. As disturbing as the
video was, it is important to note that women played no role in it. Despite
that notable absence, other assailants, such as Muhannad Halabi (stabbing attack on
October 3) and Ishaq Badran (stabbing attack on
October 10) specifically mentioned the need to protect their Muslim sisters as
a motive for their actions. Ergo, there is a nuance.
Mia Bloom and Yoram Schweitzer argue that only when
times get extremely desperate do women get actively involved in terror. So, are
Palestinians at a breaking point? Bombs and IEDs are no longer the weapons of
choice, instead, going to the streets and stabbing with knives is the new
course of action. I believe that such actions highlight an entirely new level
of anger and desperation among Palestinians. Recognizing and understanding Palestinian
women’s unprecedented engagement in this violence is a small but important step
in ending this new intifada.