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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Freed Palestinian prisoner vows to 'sacrifice' her life |
| 2011-10-19 |
| An unsuccessful suicide bomber released from prison as part of the deal to free Gilad Shalit, the Israeli conscript, on Wednesday vowed to fulfil a childhood ambition by "sacrificing" her life for the Palestinian cause. As she returned to her family home in northern Gaza, Wafa al-Bis said she would seize any opportunity to mount another suicide mission – and encouraged dozens of cheering schoolchildren to follow her example. Bis was one of hundreds of Palestinian militants freed by Israel on Tuesday in the first phase of a prisoner swap agreed with Hamas, Gaza's Islamist overlords, to win the freedom of Sgt Maj Shalit after five years in solitary confinement. But as Israel celebrated the return of its captive soldier, her words will chill critics of the deal who argue that many of the 1,027 Palestinians who are to be released from prison will rededicate themselves to violence once they have been freed. Bis was just 21 when, in 2005, she volunteered to undertake a suicide mission in Israel commissioned by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militant group that waged a campaign of violence during the Second Intifada. Her target, Israel says, was a hospital where she had been given permission to seek treatment for burns she sustained in a gas tank explosion. She never got there. Stopped by suspicious Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint on Gaza's border, she was discovered with 22-lbs of explosives sewn into a belt inside her underwear. Bis tried to blow herself up but the detonator malfunctioned. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 She was arrested for walking funny: Biss was traveling to Beersheba's Soroka hospital for medical treatment in 2005 when Israeli soldiers at the Erez border crossing noticed she was walking strangely. They found 10 kilograms (22 lbs) of explosives had been sewn into her underwear. A member of al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, Biss was sentenced to a 12-year term for planning to blow herself up. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-10-19 18:53 |