She spurns suicide mission for religion

Hamamreh, a devout Muslim, said her handlers in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, wanted her to disguise as a modern Israeli woman so she would not raise suspicion.

‘‘They wanted me to have my hair loose, wear sun glasses and makeup and tight clothes. I said no because it’s against my religion,’’ the Maariv newspaper quoted her on Thursday as telling reporters.

A day before the planned attack, Hamamreh began pondering the ‘‘righteousness’’ of the task and whether she would be accepted as a martyr in paradise because she volunteered mostly for personal reasons, including feelings of social isolation after being rejected by a man she had hoped to marry.

‘‘I started thinking I would be killing babies, women and sick people and imagined what it would be like if my family were sitting in a restaurant and someone bombed them,’’ she said. Hamamreh skipped the transportation to take her from Nablus to Jerusalem and instead went to her aunt’s house in Tulkarm where Israeli troops, acting on intelligence tips, arrested her.

If she had gone through with the attack, she would have been part of a growing trend of Palestinian women opting to become suicide bombers in a 20-month-old uprising against occupation.

Four Palestinian women have carried out suicide bombings, including Wafa Idrees, a medic whom relatives said wanted to avenge Israel’s killing of Palestinians.

Hamamreh, who looked much younger than her age in papers, had advice for would-be women bombers. ‘‘Women who want to wage jehad should start a family and have children,’’ she said. —Reuters