When Arij Joubeh's family says she knew nothing of her husband's intentions as he left to blow up an Israeli bus carrying religious Jews, it is easy to believe them.
She was clearly not prepared for the carnage exacted by Raed Mesk -- who disguised himself as an ultra-orthodox Jew so he could kill 20 people, including six children -- or she would already have packed.
On Wednesday, at a wake in Hebron for the bomber, the family said Mrs. Joubeh had heard the news of her husband's actions with alarm. Six months' pregnant, and with two children aged four and 18 months, she realized the first thing she had to do was to get out of her home in Hebron. The Israeli army routinely blows up the houses of suicide bombers.
Within a couple of hours the flat was stripped bare. By the time the troops did arrive, at 2am, neighbors had even chiselled out the window frames and stashed them for the family. The soldiers asked questions of the neighbors and left.
But the shock and desperation could not stop the widow from praising her husband's actions.
"Raed dreamed of being a martyr. That was God's wish," she said.
Other Palestinians in Hebron were more troubled. Praise for the mass murder was muted even in a city with a bitter history at the hands of a few hundred deeply religious and well armed Jews who have embarked on a kind of ethnic cleansing of the town center.
The hall hired for the suicide bomber's wake, without his body, was largely empty, perhaps in part because the army had arrested 17 relatives. It was also surprisingly devoid of the Hamas flags which usually adorn such events. In terms of numbers of dead, the Jerusalem bombing was the costliest attack on a bus in the past three years of intifada.
Yet many Palestinians kept their distance. Some said they feared the slaughter would mean an end to the six-week-old ceasefire and faltering peace process, which offers the only glimmer of hope for an end to the conflict.
Others privately speculated that the Hamas leadership had not authorized the attack, and that it had been carried out unilaterally by the Hebron faction.
But whatever the Palestinians' views on the bombing, there was common agreement that the Israelis had brought the attack on themselves.
"The ceasefire means nothing to the Israelis," said Abdul al-Nsary, an uncle of the suicide bomber. "The assassinations didn't stop, the barriers and roadblocks didn't disappear, the settlers are still attacking us. If only they stopped one thing -- assassinating militants -- the ceasefire would be a success. But the Israelis won't give it this chance."
Friends and family paint a picture of 29-year-old Raed Mesk that is now the classic portrait of a suicide bomber, particularly one from Hebron. No one believed he was capable, they said. People described him as a deeply religious man who was a preacher in the local mosque and just months from completing his degree in religion.
But deeper probing of Joubeh's family reveals a man angry with the world.
He had been in jail as a 15-year-old, during the first intifada in the 1980s, for being a member of Hamas.
"He believed there is one rule for the Americans and Israelis and another for people like the Palestinians," said a cousin, who declined to give his name. "He was very angry that the Israelis did not take the ceasefire seriously, that they kept on killing. The final straw was the killings of Kawasame and Sidr. He said the suicide action was in revenge for that."
In recent days, the Israeli army has killed Abdullah Kawasame, a high-ranking member of Hamas in Hebron, and Mohammed Sidr, the Islamic Jihad commander in the city. Mesk was a close friend of Kawasame and felt his death particularly painfully. But it was the killing of Sidr that generated the most controversial.
Although Israel is not a formal party to the ceasefire declared in late June, it had agreed to stop the raids on Palestinian cities to assassinate Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah activists it accused of terrorism.
But Israel said it reserved the right to stop imminent attacks on its citizens.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was