Two Palestinian teen bombers were similar ( 2003-08-13 15:15) (Agencies)
Two Palestinian teenage suicide bombers who killed Israelis in separate
attacks Tuesday lived remarkably parallel lives, though their families say they
didn't know each other.
17-year-old militant of the Palestinian
Islamic group Hamas, Islam Yousef Qteishat is seen in this undated family
handout picture. Islam, from the West Bank town of Nablus, blew himself up
outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel Aug. 12, 2003 killing one Israeli
and injuring two others. The attack took place shortly after another
teenage suicide bomber detonated an explosion outside a mall.
[AP]
Both were 17 years old, peddled wares on the sidewalk and lived a few blocks
apart on the same street.
Both left behind equally grotesque bombing scenes less than an hour apart,
killing themselves and one person each in an Israeli town and a West Bank Jewish
settlement 11 miles apart.
While neighbors blessed one of the teens as a "martyr," the mother of the
second screamed for revenge against the Islamic militants who sent him to his
death.
The bombings were the first since July 7. The summer has been relatively calm
thanks to a cease-fire declared by the main Palestinian groups.
Since fighting erupted in September 2000, more than 350 Israelis have been
killed in almost 100 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks.
One of the bombers' victims was Yehezkel Yekutieli, 42, who was buying food
to make breakfast for his children. One of the dozen wounded in that attack was
reported to be a pregnant woman.
The victim of the second attack was a year older than his assailant: Erez
Hershkovitz, 18, had just finished army basic training.
One bomber, Khamis Gerwan, grew up in a house in an alley in the Askar
refugee camp on the edge of the West Bank city of Nablus, and sold shoes on the
street. He became a follower of the Al Aqsa Brigades, a violent wing of Yasser
Arafat's Fatah movement that claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Gerwan had been missing for a day. Then came the news: he rigged himself with
a bomb and set it off in a small grocery store in a Tel Aviv suburb.
The teen's mother wailed and neighbors began to gather to mourn, but also to
celebrate him. Gerwan was honored — like other Palestinians who die in this
conflict — as a "martyr."
In contrast, a few houses away, the other family mourned with anger.
Islam Qteishat, a young recruit of the Islamic Hamas group, detonated his
explosives at the entrance to the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel, not far
from his home. Hamas took responsibility for his bombing.
Qteishat's mother, Yusra, 40, cried out for revenge, but not against Israel,
which had killed two Hamas men and another Palestinian in a gunbattle here days
earlier. Hamas said that attack was the reason it had carried out the suicide
bombing.
Instead, the mother wanted retribution against God and the militants who took
in her son and sent him on his grisly mission.
"I'll kill whoever dispatched my son," she screamed, beating her fists
against a wall. A decade ago, an older son was shot in the head while throwing
stones at Israeli soldiers, leaving him with brain damage.
Qteishat left behind a letter and a photo showing him with a thin beard and
holding an assault rifle.
He was a street vendor like Gerwan, selling schoolbooks, pens and notepads.
The boys' parents said the two didn't know each other, though the families
both live on Askar Road, which links the refugee camp to the city.
In the letter he left behind, Qteishat apologized to his parents and his
brothers. "Don't be sad and forgive me," he wrote.
The boy's father, a grocer, felt empty. Only days before, he'd been talking
with his son about the future, in particular about how he could retake high
school exams he failed.
"I've lost an important part of my being," he said, but added, "The Israelis
have left our boys no other choice but to turn into fighters."
