GAZA: Martyrdom: It's a word that emanates a ring of fear in every Western politician s heart. Once a chime to the bells of sainthood - such as Joan of Arc or Egypt's own St. Catherine - the word has a drastically different meaning in today's world. Martyrdom is a deeply misunderstood concept. While affluent parts of the world, progressing along the tracks of capitalist values and secularist dogma, have detached themselves from self-sacrifice and untrammeled belief, in places of intense and unrelenting conflict such as the Gaza Strip, the situation is much different. Driving through the streets of a place like Gaza, there can be no doubt that the culture of martyrdom has penetrated all facets of life. Posters of men, dead or in prison, line the concrete walls. The blank faces, often taken and blown-up from old family photographs are bordered with a halo of AK47s. Um Hassan walks into a dimly lit room in one of Gaza's outermost governorates Khan Younis carrying a tray of fizzy orange soda. The electricity flickers on and off, she rearranges a gas lamp on the table and sets herself on the couch in between the huge framed pictures of her two sons. Between expressions of joy and deep sadness she said, "Hassan has served 13 years of a 30-year sentence, and Akram also has a life sentence, but I'm proud of them. Hassan was a member of Al-Qassam Brigade, the elite armed wing of Hamas, she said. Al-Qassam, whose values and military training are rooted in the metaphysical tenet of martyrdom, have been accused by Israel of sending the rockets that triggered the reaction of the siege. But Al-Qassam soldiers have a different version to the events that led up to the siege. When I asked Abu Gaffer, a member of the group, why they sent over the rockets that triggered the siege, he replied. "It is strange that it has been reported in such a way. We have been sending over rockets for four years, and Israel has been responding during that time. These rockets are not an exceptional event. "On that particular occasion, we were responding to an attack on this district: Hay Al-Zeitoun. There was a massacre. Twenty Palestinians were killed; 15 of these were Qassam soldiers. We were just defending ourselves. Yet Abu Gafar was unable to recall the exact date of this massacre, remembering only that it had happened there, in Hay Al-Zeitoun. According to a report by the Under Secretary General for Political Affairs of the UN Lynn Pascoe on Jan. 22nd, "[Since] 15 January, militants had launched more than 150 rocket and mortar attacks at Israel, injuring 11 Israelis... Since then, 42 Palestinians have been killed and 117 injured by the IDF, which has launched eight ground incursions, 15 air strikes and 10 surface-to-surface missiles in the past week. The fear that Hamas has been increasing the range of its missiles has been filtering through Israeli military circles to the press for some time, the result of an article published on the Brigade s website Izz Al-Din. The article, dated 2005, predicted that the rocket would be the weapon of choice to prevent Israeli incursions in the coming years, as opposed to the suicide bomber of previous years. However, the disparity between the two military forces is still immense. "We don't have the same facilities that the Israeli's have, but we are heavily trained and God is by our side. Israel's surveillance flights constantly roaming over Gaza monitor our every step. Abu Gafar says, We are the army of the state, but don't have enough equipment, like a proper army should have. Their technology is obviously a great deal more powerful, but even so we managed to kill two Israelis yesterday. If that proves one thing it is that Qassam soldiers are present everywhere. We will sacrifice everything to meet heaven. The relationship between fighting for the land and the religious duty is formulated in the correlative martyrdom. "We will either achieve victory or be martyred on this land. We will fight till we take the whole land, from the sea to the river, from the Furat to the Nile, concludes Abu Gafar. Driving through the pitch black to meet another cluster of Al-Qassam Brigade soldiers, Saad El-Qa'ous, who works for the Hamas television station Al-Aqsa, turns and says: "This is not Hamas' policy. He was a fighter yes, but not a politician. Hamas are demanding a two-state solution, to return to the borders of 1967, nothing more in this generation. The next quarter Saad takes us to is Al-Burayj, a quarter and an outpost that is guarded by a cluster of soldiers, including two brothers: Abu Umiya and Abu Assad. Abu Assad, dressed in army apparel and balaclava, tells me with disturbing equanimity that they had been four brothers, but two had been killed in attacks on Israeli settlements. "Of course we initially felt sadness after our brothers died. But afterwards we felt immense joy and pride. When I ask whether they died as a result of a suicide bombing attack, their faces are a blank, until they realize what was meant. "We don't have anything called a suicide bomber ; there are only martyrs. It doesn't make a difference how you die - the first and foremost thing is faith. Suicide is when you are sad and take your own life; martyrdom is to die for the sake of a cause. "As for my children, I hope they become Al-Qassam soldiers, and if they are martyred on this soil, then I will rejoice. We have become strangers in a land stolen from us. We don't attack Americans or any other nations, only Israelis. They are a militarized society; they are therefore all soldiers. Israel's tough war against Hamas is getting steadily tougher. But whatever the outcome, there can be one certainty: The battle for hearts and minds was lost long ago. As long the psychology of martyrdom culture refuses to be understood, the war will continue unabated.
