SENTINEL WATCH April 26, 2004 Issue

The boy with the bomb at the border

By Channing Walker

Hussam Abdo, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy and would-be suicide bomber, grabbed world headlines briefly last month when he didn't blow himself up. He showed up at a checkpoint on the West Bank with 18 pounds of explosives strapped to him. Got close to a number of Israeli soldiers. Then... he changed his mind. He put it this way: "When the soldiers stopped me, I didn't press the switch. I changed my mind. I didn't want to die anymore. I'm sorry for what I did."

Both sides seized on his story, especially his age, as a weapon-of-the-moment in the PR war to win over world opinion. (Sadly, suicide bombers are younger and younger, some even in their preteen years, now.) Each side spun versions of Abdo's tale that blamed the other side for his tragic intent and near-tragic end.

Perhaps the most promising angle is altogether different and neither fuels animosity nor invites political spin and media attention. Could the real issue be, What caused Hussam Abdo to change course? In a region exploding with bitterness and recrimination, what forwarded that inner prompting not to press the switch?