The Missing Suicide Bomber

Behind the tragedy of the Dimona suicide bombing, there was one small element of farce. Imagine if you were a bomber, and you slipped out of the hole in Gaza's fence wearing your explosives vest. You've made your way across the Sinai desert, evading Egyptian police roadblocks, haggling with Bedouins over the price of a clandestine crossing into southern Israel, then you hear on the TV that your bosses in the Aksa Martyr's Brigade –-the same guys who cavalierly sent you on a suicide mission—are telling the world you're dead, that you've heroically blown yourself up in Dimona. Worse still, they've flashed your Martyr's Last Will and Testament video across all the TV networks.

So now every Israeli knows your face, and you're a dead man.

And your mother's not too happy about it, either.

This is what happened to Luai al-Aghwani, 21, from Gaza, who was announced to be one of the two Dimon suicide bombers. It turned out that the real killers came south from Hebron.

Now his mother's looking for him. “I want to know what happened to my son,” she told reporters. The last she saw of him was five days before the bombing. “He woke up one morning, wore two coats on top of each other and walked out of the house,” she added. “When I asked him why he was wearing two coats, he just smiled and walked away.”

So, a bit of advice for Luai: Stop wearing two coats. Forget Israel. Forget blowing yourself up. Bury the explosive vest in a sand dune, catch a bus to Cairo, enjoy a good meal, maybe take in a belly dancing act –-whatever it takes to remind you that there's more to life than quick martyrdom and the slaughtering of innocents. And call your mother. She's worried about you.

---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem