MERIP Primer on the Uprising in Palestine

Who Orders Suicide Bombings?

Hamas or Islamic Jihad have claimed responsibility for most of the suicide bombings and other attacks inside Israel, which had claimed over 160 civilian lives as of April 2002. The underground military wings of these organizations plan and conduct these attacks. These organizations do not recognize the state of Israel, rejected the Oslo agreements and oppose Arafat and the PA. Hamas officials claim that suicide bombings are a legitimate response to Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.

There is no credible evidence that Arafat or any other officials of the PA have any prior knowledge of Hamas and Islamic Jihad operations. Moreover, frequent Israeli attacks on PA police and security forces over the past year have seriously undermined the PA's ability to prevent them. Arafat and the PA have repeatedly condemned suicide bombings inside Israel. In December 2001, Arafat explicitly condemned suicide bombings and called for a halt to all armed attacks on Israeli civilians.

Periodically, the PA has answered US-Israeli calls to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad through mass arrests; in some cases the Islamists and their supporters have met PA police with violent resistance. At other times, Hamas (though not Islamic Jihad) has suspended attacks on Israeli civilians in deference to the PA's diplomatic efforts. In several cases, these ceasefires were suspended in response to an Israeli assassination of a Hamas militant.

In early 2002, a splinter from the secular Fatah movement called the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades began carrying out suicide bombings inside Israel, likely in retaliation for Israel's assassination of one of its leaders, Raed Karmi. Evidence purporting to show a direct link between this group's suicide bombings and Arafat is thus far inconclusive. Other Palestinian factions have expressly forsworn attacks on civilians inside the 1967 borders of Israel, though they have conducted suicide operations targeted at settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.

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