INTERVIEW WITH SAMI AL ARIAN'S TERRORIST BOSS, FORMER USF PROFESSOR SHALLAH

by London Al-Hayah

Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General on 'Martyrdom Operations,' Fatah, Egypt GMP20030108000062 London Al-Hayah in Arabic 07 Jan 03 p 10

[Part I of interview with Secretary General of Islamic Jihad Movement Dr. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, by Ghassan Sharbal, date and place not given: "Shallah: Jihad Launched First Martyrdom Operation in Palestine in 1993"]

[FBIS Translated Text]

A car with drawn curtains fetched me from the hotel. I did not ask the young driver what the address was to which we were going. These are the rules of the game that the journalist learns to follow when he wants to meet the wanted. After that, I found myself in a flat in which everybody was a guest of its absent owner.

It was midnight. The Palestinian leaders like to stay late at night. Sometimes they force their opponents to stay awake in fear of what the approaching daylight might bring; such ambiguous signs that move in twisted roads before the world wakes up to a fatal bang.

The man opened the A'ras book of poetry by the poet Mahmud Darwish and started reading.

The man continued to read for a long time. Darwish has a special place in his heart. He considers Darwish "the most important Arab poet after Mutanabbi." What he read was beautiful and captivating. Darwish is a terrorist par excellence who sneaks into the dictionary, blows himself up with it, and at the same time washes the words and mixes up their meanings and connections, and then he returns with the fragments and broken pieces in the form of images and symbols in unprecedented festivity.

Fearing that the attractiveness of the poetry might overwhelm the aim of the interview, I joked with the poetry reader to provoke him: "Doctor, where does all this tenderness come from, as you are the one who sends off dozens of would-be martyrs?" He interrupted me to explain the situation, the interview began, and it continued for several sessions.

Dr. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah is the secretary general of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.

He is now in the center of the storm. In November 2002, after the Hebron operation, which was implemented by the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, and in which 12 Israeli soldiers were killed, Prime Minister Ari'el Sharon ordered the intelligence services to put the name of Shallah at the head of the wanted list. During the period in which this interview was conducted last month, Israel announced the arrest of two Islamic Jihad members on charges of gathering information and preparing for an attack against the helicopter that Sharon uses to move around the country. Naturally we asked Shallah about this; he answered: "So far, we have no details, but Sharon should know that if he behaves like a gangster who fires threats of liquidation and assassination, then he should expect anything from the Palestinian people." In reply to a question about whether targeting Sharon had anything to do with the threats he [Sharon] had addressed to Shallah, he said: "It is customary that the Israeli aggressive behavior determines many of the resistance's methods of work. I do not find it surprising that the fighters would think of striking at any target, even Sharon." It seemed clear that Shallah did not want to say anything that could be used against the two detained young men.

There were numerous sessions; Dr. Shallah was patient enough to answer the questions of the series entitled "He Reminisces". He talked about the first shot in the martyrdom operations by Islamic Jihad, the would-be martyrs, and their spiritual and technical training. He talked about the birth of the movement. He revealed new information about the assassination of his mentor and predecessor, Fathi al-Shiqaqi, in Malta [1995] during his return from a trip to Libya during which he used a Libyan passport in the name of Ibrahim al-Shawish. Shallah held Mosad responsible for the assassination of Shiqaqi, but he did not hesitate to blame the Libyan institutions that insisted on the personal attendance of Shiqaqi, asked him to delay his return, and were responsible for his protection during the trip.

The Islamic Jihad secretary general talked about 11 September [2001] and his stance towards the killing of civilians there. He denied having any relations with Usama Bin Ladin. However, he revealed that Ayman al-Zawahiri had sent him a message of reproach after reading an interview that Shallah gave to sister Al-Wasat and in which he talked about the Jews in Palestine.

Here is the text of the first episode:

[Sharbal] What do you feel when you see an Israeli bus full of Israeli soldiers being blown up by a Palestinian? What comes to your mind then?

[Shallah] This scene recalls to my mind the other side of the picture, which is the massacres and killings committed by these soldiers every day against our Palestinian people. Also, if those killed in the bus were soldiers, then I would feel proud of our people's ability to defend themselves and to inflict pain on this enemy who inflicts pain on us every day.

[Sharbal] What if those killed were civilians?

[Shallah] I wish you asked me about my feelings when I see a massacre, such as the one that happened in Burayj during the Id. Are their corpses the only sacred ones for which we should weep and feel pain?

[Sharbal] What are the characteristics that a would-be martyr should have?

[Shallah] He has to be willing to be a martyr.

[Sharbal] Does the would-be martyr undergo specific courses or isolation periods, during which he reads the Koran and gets ready to carry out a mission of this size?

[Shallah] The truth is that we do not have factories to breed would-be martyrs. In the West, when they exaggerate the conditions and rites to which the would-be martyrs are subjected, they work according to the Western perspective of building character. What happens in the West is that they construct an artificial entity for a normal character in order to fulfill self-ambitions. A person must learn this and that in order to respond to the demand in the job market; he must behave in a certain way to get that position. This is the life in the West.

In general, there are two types of training for the fighters: Spiritual and moral training through religious mobilization and education, and operational training related to the mission for which the individual is chosen. The person who goes out on an operation of engagement with the army differs from the person who goes out to blow himself up with an explosive belt; the one who targets a military position differs from the one who targets a bus; and so on.

[Sharbal] How are the individuals chosen for the operations?

[Shallah] They volunteer. No one is forced to go. The suitable person is selected from the volunteers and from those who are on the waiting list.

[Sharbal] Are there specific instructions that are given to them?

[Shallah] There are instructions concerning the mission, and they vary from one mission to another.

[Sharbal] Do they have the freedom to change the plan given to them?

[Shallah] At the end of the day, the matter concerns the life of the person and his soul. We do not want the young man to be killed for nothing. He has to be committed to the success of the mission that he goes to implement, but if problems or emergencies occur, then he has the right to behave according to the circumstances he faces.

[Sharbal] Does this include blowing himself up if he felt that he might be arrested?

[Shallah] It could; but the instructions are that the blowing up should not be carried out without ensuring that the enemy will suffer losses and casualties. In some cases, this has happened; in others, the aim was achieved accurately according to plan, and even more, as it happened in Hebron, Megido, and Karkur. In some cases, the would-be martyrs were arrested before the implementation; in one case it happened because the would-be martyr refused to strike at a civilian bus. The would-be martyr, Zaydan Zaydan from Janin, went to carry out an operation in Haifa. He was standing at the bus stop carrying a briefcase full of explosives, a bus containing civilian passengers arrived, he did not get into the bus, he moved away to look for another target, and policemen noticed him and they fired at him. He was wounded and detained. He could have got into the bus and blown it up.

[Sharbal] Do you know any of the would-be martyrs?

[Shallah] The majority of the would-be martyrs are from the younger generation. I do not know them personally, but I know their leaders, those who send out the would-be martyrs.

[Sharbal] Such as whom?

[Shallah] Such as martyr Mahmud al-Khawaja, the commander of the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Gaza who sent the two martyrs Anwar Sukkar and Salah Shakir to carry out the Bayt Lid operation in which 22 Israeli soldiers were killed. Mahmud was a student at the Islamic University in Gaza and was one of the first young men to join the movement in Gaza in 1982. He was the president of the student group of the movement at the Islamic University. He was a young man of strong physique and will. He became the commander of the movement's military wing; after that, the enemy assassinated him on 22 June 1995, about four months before the assassination of Dr. Fathi Shiqaqi. There are others, such as martyrs Mahmud Tawalibah, Iyad Sawalihah, and Iyad Hardan; brothers Thabit al-Mardawi and Ali al-Safuri who are prisoners; and other commanders of Al-Quds Brigades. I know them and I used to talk to them, but I have not met them in person.

[Sharbal] Was Mahmud Tawalibah the commander of Al-Quds Brigades in Janin?

[Shallah] He was the commander in the camp. The enemy accused him of sending out 17 would-be martyrs from Janin region alone.

[Sharbal] Was that true?

[Shallah] Yes, that was true. However, not all of them carried out their operations. Four of them were arrested before they could carry out the operations, including his brother Murad Tawalibah. When Murad's operation failed, Mahmud was sad and said: 'I myself prepared the bomb, I put in sufficient explosives and triggers, but I do not know what went wrong.'

[Sharbal] He said that about his brother?

[Shallah] Yes. When the battle of Janin occurred and some people advised him to escape with his life because the enemy was coming to kill him, he said to those around him: 'Previously, I used to send out others to become martyrs; now is the time to decide to be a martyr myself.' He fought until he was martyred during the heroic odyssey of Janin.

[Sharbal] What are the ages of the would-be martyrs? Is it true that you have sent out 13-year-old boys?

[Shallah] This is Zionist propaganda. The youngest martyr was Ahmad Daraghimah from Janin, who was 17 years old. There are martyrs in their twenties and thirties. Martyrs Dawud Abu-Duway from Bethlehem was 45 years old and he left a family including seven children.

[Sharbal] Why did you not send a younger man?

[Shallah] The brothers in the military wing said that he insisted on going. He targeted the Hilton Hotel in Jerusalem, in which Israeli Public Security Minister Uzi Landau and other ministers were guests, but he blew himself up at the door when the police challenged him.

[Sharbal] Was he targeting the security minister?

[Shallah] If not, why had he targeted the hotel; he could have blown himself up in the street and killed a large number of Israelis.

[Sharbal] Is there a competition between you and HAMAS over who kills more Israelis?

[Shallah] There is a competition among all factions in the arena of struggle and resistance, but it is not over killing. We are not bloodthirsty and we do not kill others for the sake of killing. We do not enjoy killing. We are defending our rights and ourselves. We did not occupy a land that belonged to the Jews and we did not destroy their homeland. They killed us, dispersed us, and established their entity over our ruins.

[Sharbal] But does a competition over carrying out operations exist among the factions?

[Shallah] This has been going on for a long time in the Palestinian arena, and we hope to get rid of it.

[Sharbal] Was the Hebron operation a reply to the Cairo dialogue between Fatah and HAMAS?

[Shallah] Certainly not. An operation of this size and kind needs a long time to plan and prepare and it cannot be done at the push of a button.

[Sharbal] Many people ask the question: Why do HAMAS and Islamic Jihad not unite into a single movement?

[Shallah] Unity is good. However, sometimes multiplicity and diversity are required; they could serve the battle and confuse the enemy. The multiplicity of headlines, despite its negative aspects, helps to absorb the energies of our people. If someone does not like to work within this framework, then rather than staying at home he could go and join the resistance within another framework.

[Sharbal] Even if this framework was not Islamic?

[Shallah] Even if it was not Islamic. Our people, like any people in the world, include all the colors of the political and ideological spectrum. We do not restrain anybody.

[Sharbal] But could not multiplicity in an arena, such as the Palestinian one, introduce and encourage conflicts?

[Shallah] It is the responsibility of the reasonable and loyal members of every faction to work towards avoiding this. To have competition -- that is, competition in doing good deeds and in Jihad -- this is legitimate; God says: "For this let the strivers strive" [Koran verse]. As for having disputes, this is unacceptable and prohibited: "Do not engage in disputes with one another, lest you lose courage and become insignificant" [Koran verse].

In my opinion, if we liberate ourselves from the sickness of fanatic partisanship, then we will be able to preserve the balance and we will not stumble onto the grave slippery slopes of hateful disputes in which everyone claims to be the only one that is right on the struggle stage or to be the guardian of resistance or of Islam. The situation of the Palestinians, even of the whole [Islamic] nation, does not allow for any disputes. We need to look for the points of agreement and to consolidate them in order to preserve the national unity and close our ranks, because any problem in all this will become a sledgehammer in the hands of our enemy who is waging a war of annihilation against us.

[Sharbal] It was announced recently that you have joined the Cairo dialogue. What is the truth about this?

[Shallah] If you mean the Cairo dialogue between Fatah and HAMAS, then we have not participated in it from the beginning, we were not invited to it, and it has not been resumed; this is despite the fact that domestically we are the ones who initiated the dialogue among the factions. Indeed there were meetings in which five factions participated; they were HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP]. As for our dialogue with the Egyptian brothers: Yes, a meeting and contacts have taken place; this is not new.

[Sharbal] Did you contact them, or have they invited you?

[Shallah] They invited us and we accepted.

[Sharbal] To whom was the invitation addressed?

[Shallah] It was addressed to me personally, and to the Islamic Jihad Movement. However, my personal circumstances prevented me from going to Cairo; hence, someone else went.

[Sharbal] Who addressed the invitation to you?

[Shallah] Senior government officials.

[Sharbal] Who, for instance?

[Shallah] There is no need to mention names; however, rest assured that it was official Egyptians of high rank in the state. The dialogue took place in Cairo and not in some unknown place somewhere else in the world.

[Sharbal] What was the subject of the dialogue?

[Shallah] Discussing the latest developments in the Palestinian arena, the situation in the region, future concepts, and their effect upon the Palestinian arena.

[Sharbal] Did they ask you to stop the martyrdom operations?

[Shallah] They proposed some ideas related to calming the situation as a part of a comprehensive dialogue about the management of the conflict with the enemy during this stage.

[Sharbal] Did you agree to the calming of the situation?

[Shallah] The explosive situation within Palestine is not of our making so that we cannot be asked to calm it. The enemy is setting on fire everything under the feet of our people and we are defending ourselves. We expressed our opinion of our people's legitimate right to defend themselves in the face of the continuous Zionist aggression.

[Sharbal] What was the result?

[Shallah] We agreed to continue the dialogue with the brothers in Cairo without specifying a timetable or dates, and we hope to resume it soon.

[Sharbal] Is not this step of yours a development in the political stance of the Islamic Jihad Movement?

[Shallah] If you want to consider it so, then this will be all right. At the end of the day, we are a resistance movement that needs Arab support and aid for our cause and struggle. As a resistance movement, we have, praise be to God, enough self-confidence in our weight in the Palestinian struggle to make us have some kind of flexibility in our dealings with all the sons of our nation, a flexibility that opens the way for give-and-take between us and anyone concerned about Palestine and Jerusalem, the first Qibla.

[Sharbal] How do you interpret the Egyptian request addressed to you and HAMAS to calm or stop the operations under these circumstances? What would that be in exchange for?

[Shallah] We did not engage in a bargaining deal. Any Arab or Muslim party concerned about Palestine has the right to propose any ideas. Egypt's role and historic presence in Palestinian affairs are well known. The Egyptian brothers said what they wanted to say and we listened. God says, "So give glad tidings to My servants who listen to speech and follow the best in it." We will follow what is good for and in the interest of our people and our nation.

[Sharbal] Is it true that Islamic Jihad asked the Egyptians to widen the circle of dialogue to include other factions?

[Shallah] It is true. We asked for this.

[Sharbal] Such as whom?

[Shallah] Such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the General Command. Of course, HAMAS and Fatah have preceded us in the dialogue.

[Sharbal] How do you take a decision in the Islamic Jihad Movement, or what is the organizational structure of the movement?

[Shallah] According to the statutes, there is a General Congress, a General Shura Council, and a secretary general. There are also local shura councils from which organizational specialized committees stem. Our organizational structure has enough flexibility and adaptability to cope with the extraordinary and domestic security circumstances of the movement and to operate in an atmosphere of harmony and efficiency.

[Sharbal] How long is the term of the secretary general?

[Shallah] Four years.

[Sharbal] Can he be re-elected?

[Shallah] Yes. There are no restrictions on the number of terms he can serve.

[Sharbal] Then you are in your second term. Do you wish to be re-elected?

[Shallah] The decision is up to the movement and its grassroots. Whatever my position might be, I am a soldier in the service of the homeland and Islam. If I had a personal wish, then it would be to become a martyr for the cause of God.

[Sharbal] Who carried out the first martyrdom operation in Palestine?

[Shallah] Do you mean a blow-up martyrdom operation or a fighter?

[Sharbal] I mean a blow-up operation by an individual blowing himself up.

[Shallah] It was the Islamic Jihad Movement, when martyr Anwar Aziz, from Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, blew himself up in a booby-trapped car on 13 December 1993 in the midst of a convoy of Zionist soldiers in Gaza.

[Sharbal] But HAMAS says that it was the first to carry out a martyrdom operation?

[Shallah] I think that HAMAS is referring to the operation by martyr Ra'id Zakarinah; however, this operation took place on 6 April 1994.

[Sharbal] From where did you get the idea of the martyrdom operations? Is it from Lebanon and Hizballah?

[Shallah] Definitely the resistance in Lebanon was the first struggle to carry out blowing-up martyrdom operations, particularly when they carried out the blowing up of the US Marines headquarters in 1983 and other operations.

[Sharbal] The Marines Headquarters operation is attributed to Hizballah, but surely it did not exist then?

[Shallah] Hizballah did not implement the operation of blowing up the US Marines headquarters. A resistance member called Abu-Zaynab whose identity was not known until now did it.

[Sharbal] If the operations started in Lebanon earlier, then why were they delayed in Palestine?

[Shallah] The martyrdom operations commenced after the intifadah. During the years of the intifadah, concentration was on popular action, but the military action existed and the patriotic movement and the Palestinian resistance factions had been fighting for years. As for the Islamic Jihad Movement, it started its military action in the mid-eighties.

[Sharbal] Could you say that the Islamic Jihad Movement is not an elite movement anymore?

[Shallah] There are two sides to this phrase; one is negative and the other is positive. The positive side is that Islamic Jihad indeed is no longer a small movement restricted to a group of intellectuals or theoreticians. It is now a popular movement of struggle that fights the Zionist occupation. It includes all age groups and social classes. It includes students, workers, peasants, merchants, and school and university teachers. There is no Palestinian village, camp, or suburb in which Islamic Jihad is not represented. As far as the other side, or the negative side, is concerned, the lessening of the elite character of the movement does not mean a lessening of perception, particularly as many of the members of the first generation are leading the action today. Dr. Muhammad al-Hindi, Shaykh Nafiz Azzam, Shaykh Abdullah al-Shami, and many others are from the first generation of the movement since the student stage in Egypt.

[Sharbal] These names are in Gaza, which seems to be the stronghold of the movement. What about the West Bank? Where is the center of gravity of the movement today -- is it in the West Bank, Gaza, or abroad?

[Shallah] The strength of the movement is distributed among the three axes you mentioned. The movement exists in Gaza and, praise be to God, is strong there. It also exists in the West Bank; the proof of its strength there is the number of martyrs who came out during this intifadah. Thirty-six martyrs from Islamic Jihad carried out martyrdom operations from the West Bank, not to mention those who have been arrested and the other military operations. As for the presence of our symbols and leaders, our movement in the West Bank has pushed forward the best of its cadres into this intifadah; many of them are either martyrs or detained. For instance, Shaykh Riyad Budayr, one of the founders of the Islamic Jihad Movement in the West Bank and one of the first acquaintances of the late Dr. Fathi al-Shiqaqi, was 55 years old and a well-known Islamic caller in Tulkarm. When the Janin battle occurred this year [2002], he went from Tulkarm, despite the siege and the curfew in the Janin camp, and fought alongside his brothers and was martyred in battle.

Anwar Hamran, Iyad Hardan, Mahmud Tawalibah, Wa'il Assaf, As'ad Abu-Daqqah, Ayman Daraghimah, Muhammad al-Anini, Ahmad As'ad Khalil, Muhammad Bisharat, Khalid Zakarinah, and Iyad Sawalihah were all commanders in the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, and all of them were martyred in this intifadah. There are others who are detained, such as Hajj Ali al-Safuri, Thabit al-Mardawi, Tariq Izz-al-Din, Shaykh Abd-al-Halim Izz-al-Din from Janin, Shaykh Muhammad Darwish from Hebron, Shaykh Sa'id Nakhlah from Ramallah, brother Khalid al-Zawawi from Nablus, brother Abd-al-Nasir Suways from Tulkarm, and many others.

Many others are pursued by the Israeli authorities, some of them are military personnel that I do not want to expose, and others are politicians such as Shaykh Abd-al-Hakim Musalamah from Ramallah and Shaykh Bassam al-Sa'di from Janin who gave his twin sons Abd-al-Karim and Ibrahim as martyrs in this intifadah. They were twins in birth and twins in martyrdom; the time difference between their martyrdoms was less than two months. Shaykh Bassam's mother and nephew were also martyred. All this happened as he was pursued and hunted; he is a 45-year-old political cadre. This is in addition to the women cadres, the most prominent of whom are sister Itaf Aliyan in Bethlehem, sister Muna Qa'dan in Janin, and others. As for our presence abroad, it is symbolic and limited to the secretary general and a part of the political leadership of the movement.

[Sharbal] When did the presence of the movement abroad start?

[Shallah] After the exile of Dr. Fathi al-Shiqaqi and some brothers to Lebanon during the first intifadah in 1988.

[Sharbal] What is your relationship with Fatah or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades?

[Shallah] Our relationship with Fatah is good. The situation is better with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades because Fatah includes the policy that agrees with Oslo, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has returned to the armed struggle.

[Sharbal] There is talk that the Islamic Jihad Movement finances groups of or operations by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. What is the truth of this?

[Shallah] This is not true. We are an Islamic Jihad Movement and not an Islamic bank. We have our military organization and our fighters. In fact, we are unable to respond to all the requirements of our fighters or the financial requirements of our organization.

[Sharbal] Some people say that you want to implicate Fatah; hence, you carried out joint operations with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

[Shallah] This is called the conspiracy interpretation of history. Nobody is implicating Fatah. It is capable of implicating countries. People act according to their convictions. The joint operations were the fruit of principled relations and true cooperation between the Al-Quds Brigades and Al-Aqsa Brigades.

[Sharbal] Who controls the decisions of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades?

[Shallah] What I know is that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are not a united organization under a single leadership in Palestine. The Al-Aqsa Brigades are separate groups dispersed in the cities, villages, and camps. Here and there, contacts and coordination could happen among the groups, according to the circumstances in the field.

[Newspaper promises further installments of this interview]

Return to Table of Contents