Wafa Idris - Reaction

Reaction

Shortly after the bombing, before the bomber had been identified, Hezbollah's TV channel reported that the bomber was named Shahanaz Al Amouri, from An-Najah National University in Nablus. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack a few days after the attack which they said Idris had carried out in response to Israeli military actions. Her family said that Idris was angered by seeing children shot and killed during confrontations in Ramallah. According to her mother, although Idris' three brothers were members of Fatah, she was not known to be an activist with any Palestinian militant group. As the first Palestinian woman to undertake such an attack, Idris received more international and regional media attention than Palestinian male bombers and two of the three Palestinian women bombers who followed her in 2002, with the exception of Ayat al-Akhras, the third and youngest Palestinian female suicide bomber. The bombing created intense interest in the Arab media with many newspapers describing Idris as a hero and a nationalist. An editorial published in Egypt's weekly newspaper Al-Sha'ab a few days after the bombing, stated, in part, "It is a woman who teaches you today a lesson in heroism, who teaches you the meaning of jihad, and the way to die a martyr's death ...It is a women who has shocked the enemy with her thin, meager and weak body. It is a woman who blew herself up, and with her exploded all the myths about woman's weakness, submissiveness, and enslavement."