Social Work and Suicide Bombings

In a six-story warehouse on the eastern edge of this Palestinian city, tons of flour, rice and noodles are stacked roof-high.

A worker steers a forklift festooned with green Islamic flags, lifting and shifting pallets and crates. A brigade of bearded men shovels sugar into small sacks and packs box after box with relief supplies for thousands of Palestinian families.

The kinetic operation is the work of the Islamic Charitable Society, which is distributing goods with the help of millions of dollars of Saudi money--and some American money--while also generating a lot of political goodwill for radical Islamic organizations like Hamas.

The mounting influence, power and appeal of Hamas among many Palestinians come from the efficacy with which it kills Jews. But its lasting power derives from the way it has permeated Palestinian society and positioned itself to pose a dangerous challenge to Yasser Arafat, the besieged president of the Palestinian Authority.

In angry demonstrations Friday, Hamas supporters and other Islamic militants marched in the West Bank city of Ramallah and in Gaza City and chanted slogans against Arafat and the arrests of militants he has ordered. In Gaza, the demonstrators briefly clashed with Palestinian police for a second day. But in both cities, the confrontations quickly settled into tense standoffs, and no injuries were reported.

The protests followed Israel’s predawn bombardment of Gaza City’s main police headquarters--a resumption of the air war against Palestinian targets in retaliation for Hamas suicide bombings. Two four-story buildings were flattened, and close to 20 people were injured. Palestinians, meanwhile, fired eight mortar shells at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, though they caused no damage or injuries.

Early today, Israeli aircraft fired missiles into the principal security complex in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, causing extensive damage but no injuries.

Throughout all this, however, work at the Islamic Charitable Society has been in full swing. In observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the charity is responding to the deep poverty in the Palestinian territories left by 14 months of uprising and the resulting Israeli crackdown.

The society and other organizations like it are filling a void that the ruling Palestinian Authority can’t or won’t fill, helping to push loyalties away from the governing regime toward Hamas and similar Islamic factions.

The military wing of Hamas carries out horrific suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis, including three attacks in a 12-hour period last weekend that claimed more than two dozen lives. But the political wing has for years used social work as the vehicle for expanding its base of sympathizers to include tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Here in Hebron, Hamas has been on the ascendancy for years. The Islamic Charitable Society is not officially a Hamas organization, but its director and several of its managers are members of the militant group. Hamas has recently sought to distance itself from many of the charitable organizations to shield them from any Palestinian Authority reprisal.

Sheik Abdel Halik Natshe, the director of the charity, says the need for aid is growing enormously among Palestinians.

“It is a big burden, but we are responding,” he said in a recent interview at his office on Peace Street. “Sometimes we feel exhausted with everything that has to be done. But at the end, we feel satisfied that we have helped people on the right path.”

Like Islamic charities throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Natshe’s agency operates a broad network of facilities and services, everything from orphanages and schools to medical clinics, food distribution channels and, just outside Hebron, a 150-cow dairy farm.

Natshe said Saudi Arabian organizations have mounted three fund-raising campaigns and donated $50 million to Palestinians since the intifada began in September 2000.

Some of the money goes directly to Natshe’s group and pays for things such as the Ramadan care packages, and some of it goes into the bank accounts of relatives of Palestinians killed or wounded or to those whose homes have been destroyed in Israeli raids. The charity says it has delivered 100,000 care packages this Ramadan.

Natshe said his agency has also received money from a U.S. group, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The U.S. government this week shut down Holy Land for allegedly funneling money to Hamas.

A Hamas official, Abdel Majid Atta, who is based in Bethlehem, would not discuss money received by Hamas, saying its funding sources are “secret and confidential.” But he acknowledged that shutting down Holy Land could hurt charities like the Islamic Charitable Society.

Israel has long suspected that some Islamic charities channel funds to armed militants. Hamas advocates the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of Israelis from the region.

The inability of the Palestinian Authority to provide sufficiently for its constituents has been dramatized in the last year of deadly strife, during which violence and Israeli blockades have plunged most Palestinians deeper into poverty. This inability has helped erode the power of Arafat and his regime while bolstering Hamas and the radical Islamic Jihad.

Natshe said his organization had to substantially increase its staffing to meet this year’s demand among the needy. Palestinians who have lost their jobs in the intifada have been hired to pack and distribute food and other relief supplies.

Natshe has also set up a committee to appraise the damage inflicted on homes by Israeli shelling or tank fire and then help the residents obtain money for repairs. It is another sign of how the organization touches many aspects of Palestinian life.

In a recent poll of Palestinians by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, the Islamic parties for the first time surpassed Arafat’s Fatah organization in popularity. Nearly half those polled said they wanted the future Palestine to be an Islamic state.

Kamal Sarasrah, a resident of the West Bank town of Beit Jala, received his Ramadan package from the Islamic Charitable Society a few days ago.

Times are tough, he said. His work as a taxi driver has been drastically truncated by Israeli blockades around his and other Palestinian towns. He was glad to receive the donated food, the first such help he has gotten, and he praised the Islamic charities for efficient work, “unlike others”--an allusion to the Palestinian Authority.

“I hope these charities continue in their work. It is as much moral and psychological help as material help,” said the 27-year-old father of two. “I felt happy knowing that there are people who still care about us.”