Last week hundreds of Palestinian women formed a suicide bomb squad. Are female suicide bombers really different from males?

By Anne Marie Oliver for Salon.com

Um Ahmed, 36, a mother of eight, holds what she says is a suicide belt July 5. The local Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade commander says she is one of 20 women in her Gaza Strip village given such belts every evening in anticipation of an Israeli attack.

Last week, amid the chaos and confusion that followed the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and Israel's subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip, Fatah's armed wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, announced the creation of an all-female military branch. In a televised press conference held in Gaza, a heavily veiled woman calling herself Um al-Abed declared that 100 Palestinian women stand ready and willing to become suicide bombers on behalf of the nationalist party founded by the late Yasser Arafat. They intend to carry out strikes not only against Israeli targets, she said, but also against Hamas, Fatah's longtime rival in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, another group of mujahedat (women devoted to jihad) associated with the Popular Resistance Committees took to the streets of Gaza City, where they burned Israeli, U.S., British, and EU flags -- some with missile launchers resting on their shrouded shoulders.

Though these fledgling female armies may surprise many in the West, a much bigger line was crossed in 2002, when Wafa' Idris, a resident of al-Ama'ari Refugee Camp in the West Bank, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber.Idris had been forced into an arranged marriage by her elder brother. Like most other Palestinian women, she was dependent almost entirely on male relatives for her economic well-being and survival and had no choice but to accede to her brother's decision. In her heart, however, she remained defiant and never accepted the marriage or her new husband, a first cousin. When she became pregnant against her will, she secretly aborted the child. On top of her unhappy marriage, abortion, and subsequent divorce, Idris was further traumatized by her weekly exposure to blood and death in her work as a paramedic for the Red Crescent, where she volunteered every Friday, caring for large numbers of Palestinians wounded during the second intifada.