On suicide bombing. posted by Richard Seymour

Terry Eagleton's article on the topic in The Guardian yesterday wasn't his best, but it was provocative enough to get this , from Norm, this from Chris Young and this from Chris Brooke (cited in order of sympathy with the points made).

I don't think there is a great mystery about why Palestinians engage in suicide bombings against Israel. For instance, Jacqueline Rose says this:

According to Eyad El-Sarraj, the founder and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, today's suicide attackers are, for the most part, children of the first intifada. Studies show that during the first uprising, 55 per cent of children saw their fathers being humiliated or beaten by Israeli soldiers. Martyrdom - sacrificing oneself for God - increases its appeal when the image of the earthly father bites the dust. 'It's despair,' El-Sarraj states baldly, 'a despair where living becomes no different from dying.' When life is constant degradation, death is the only source of pride. 'In 1996, practically all of us were against the martyr operations,' Kamal Aqeel, the acting mayor of Khan Yunis in Gaza, explains. 'Not any longer . . . We all feel that we can no longer bear the situation as it is; we feel that we'd simply explode under all this pressure of humiliation.'

During the period when Palestine and Israel were supposed to be making pretty noises at one another, reaching agreements for a possible future agreement for a possible future Palestinian state, what was Israel doing? Building more settlements (with those charming 'Jewish Only' roads attached), while siezing water-supplies. While settlers floated on deep blue swimming pools, Palestinians just down the hill carried their water home in jerry cans. Violence against Palestinians continued at a low level, especially in state institutions where torture was and is widely practised. In short, the occupation did not end because of negotiations, it intensified. And under Barak, there was an intensification of violence against Palestinians. In July 2000, the fruit of Oslo was finally unveiled at Camp David: the Palestinians were to be granted a few strips of land interpolated by armed Israeli settlements. The best the Palestinians could achieve, after years of negotiation, was a deal that perpetuated "the subjugation of the Palestinians" (according to then special adviser to the Foreign Office, David Clark ). Meanwhile, "Already in summer 2000, the authoritative Jane's Information Group reported that Israel had completed planning for a massive and bloody invasion of the Occupied Territories." ( Norman Finkelstein , more here .). It is clear now, as if it wasn't clear at the time, that Israel never had any intention of taking Palestine's "peace offensive" as anything other than a threat. The rest is fairly well-known history.

The Palestinians do not have hawk air-jets or tanks or helicopters. They don't even have a very well-equipped army. They have a subterranean movement which includes both religious and secular groups. In direct combat with the IDF, they don't stand a chance. Hence, suicide bombings.

You don't have to infer from what I have said that I consider suicide bombings a just tactic (certainly not those directed at civilians) or a wise tactic. But there is no mystery. Palestinians mount suicide attacks because they are desperate, and because they have little else, because negotiations have delivered nothing, and because it affords them an extended reach that their cache of toy weapons do not. There are also issues of mental health when considering the individual suicide bomber, since many are said to suffer from psychological distortions, lack of social affect and so on. Ideology has its weight, of course, although it is wrong to reduce this to religious fervour. However, the main cause of suicide bombings in Israel is what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians.

If you prefer to avoid such crushing realities, take refuge with Linda Grant, who writes to Norm that:

Some research has been done on the motives of suicide bombers, by interviewing those who failed to pull it off. Amazingly, they reported that they did it because it was cool. Now in prison, their principal request is for hair gel. I kid you not.

Apparently, then, it's all about living fast and dying young...