Reem Al-Reyashi yesterday achieved her long-held ambition of being a suicide bomber when she killed herself and four Israelis at a bleak industrial park in the Gaza Strip, writes Nuala Haughey at Erez Crossing, Gaza.
The 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two became the first woman "martyr" used by the Islamic militant group Hamas when she struck in a busy terminal where Palestinian workers from the fenced-in strip were going through Israeli security checks before entering the industrial complex.
In a farewell videotape released after the attack, Al-Reyashi, from nearby Gaza City, cradled a rifle against a backdrop of two green Hamas flags, and said she had dreamed since she was 13 of "becoming a martyr".
Smiling at times, the high school graduate who was active in a Hamas women's group professed her love for her two children who she left behind, a son aged 3½ and an 18-month-old daughter.
"I always wanted to be the first woman to carry out a martyr attack, where parts of my body can fly all over. That is the only wish I can ask God for," she said. "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists."
The attack, claimed jointly by Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, came as efforts to restart peace negotiations remain stalled.
Today, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, arrives in Israel hoping to rekindle the peace process. Mr Cowen is representing the EU, which is a member of the quartet behind the roadmap to peace along with the US, Russia and the UN. Mr Cowen will meet Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and his counterpart at the foreign ministry, Mr Silvan Shalom, as well as opposition leader Mr Shimon Peres, before travelling to Egypt.
Al-Reyashi, who is from a middle-class merchant family, struck at 9.30 a.m. in the single-story terminal building which leads to the Erez Industrial Estate, a dreary zone of concrete factories where some 4,000 Palestinians from Gaza daily work.
The estate lies within the borders of the coastal Gaza Strip, but since 1993 Palestinians have need permits from Israel to work there.
The Israeli army said Al-Reyashi had faked a limp and told security personnel that she had metal pins in her leg from an injury which would set off the walk-through metal detector.
As the staff set about arranging for a female soldier to search her in a private room, she detonated the explosives which the army suspect she had packed into a vest.
Four Israelis were killed, including three soldiers and one Israeli civilian and a dozen people were injured, including four Palestinians.
A relative later said the family had not known of her plans.