Terror Behind Bars

Anyone who thought the U.S. was winning the war on terror got a rude shock when Hamas won an overwhelming victory in Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas is a militant Islamic organization dedicated to the total destruction of Israel. It is responsible for more suicide bombings than all the other Palestinian organizations combined. Hamas leaders say they are struggling against the Israeli occupation.

But what really goes through the mind of a terrorist when he is bombing a café or plotting the murder of someone he never met? We know very little about this.

Accomplished terrorists are hardly ever captured alive — and when they are, they rarely give interviews. But correspondent Bob Simon was given unprecedented access to terrorist leaders in Israel's top security prison. He met men and women who haven't spoken to journalists since their capture. They shared their tales of terror.

"I feel bad because the number only 66. This the answer you want to hear it?" Barghouti told Simon.

"I want to hear what you have to say," Simon replied.

"No, this is the answer they want to hear it? Yes, I feel bad, because I want more," Barghouti said.

Barghouti has already killed more Israelis than anyone else. For two years, he sent suicide bombers to places, ordinary places, the names of which no Israeli will ever forget. They include "The Moment Café," the Hebrew University cafeteria and the Sbarro Pizzeria, where seven children were killed.

What is particularly grotesque about Barghouti's story is that he's a university graduate, well-traveled, a music lover. In fact, listen to how he made his first suicide bomb with his most prized possession.

"I get my best piece, the guitar. I have it, I like it, I respect it," he explains. "I open it, make a bomb inside it, close it, send it with the guy. And he make the bomb. And it's done."

Barghouti says he was driven by revenge after Israel killed two Hamas leaders, who were his best friends, in an Apache helicopter attack in Nablus in July 2001.

"After I see that, what do you think me? Sit in the home, in the corner, and cry? No. The God, holy Quran, tell me, 'Who try to destroy you, you should destroy him,' " says Barghouti.

For Barghouti, it's eye for an eye — and then some. "Who he's — kick my eye, I will kick his two eye and poke his lip. Because later I can't see. But I can't — I can walk. But he, he can't see and he can't walk," he says.

Walking through this prison, this fortress in the desert, is an experience one can't prepare oneself for. One of the blocs is home to the most hardened prisoners, all serving multiple life terms. The guards call it the "All-Star bloc." Simon says he knew the names of almost all these men, their names and their deeds. He never thought he'd be standing a few inches from them, having a chat.

Muhammed Jalala is one of those men, and he started his campaign from a strange place. He was a nurse in a Jerusalem hospital. In 1990, he helped care for Palestinian victims after the Israelis shot into a crowd at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque.

"I hate to see a drop of a blood from any kind of people," Jalala says.

But it was seeing the blood of his own people that inspired him to change his career — from nurse to terrorist. Five months after the Al-Aqsa tragedy, he went to a bus stop in a residential neighborhood in Jerusalem. Men and women were waiting there, civilians he'd never seen before.

Jalala went for a man, deciding to stab him.

What happened next?

"And then they start to shout, they try to attack me. And then begin the party," he recalls.

The party. Before he was subdued, Jalala stabbed 12 people, four of them women whom he stabbed to death.

Asked what was going through his mind as he was stabbing Israeli women, Jalala says, "I believe that any occupied people have to defend themselves in any means, in any ways…. If you kill my wife, I have to kill yours. This is a punishment. This is the point."

"This may be a point. But I don't believe that it was these points that were going through your mind as you were stabbing these women. I want to know what was going through your mind at the time," Simon asks.

"I just saw the black title. The revenge is the only means to stop our people's killing," Jalala replies.

It was quenching that thirst for revenge which has packed Israel's prisons. The men's security wing at Be'er Sheva Prison is teeming, often eight to a cell.

Gilad Cohen, a guard at the prison, admits that facing these terrorists every day is very tough.

The Israelis subject the prisoners to a very tough regimen. There are constant head counts and cell searches; guards perform drills in the open to remind inmates what can happen if they step too far out of line.

But these prisoners maintain their own discipline. They see themselves as prisoners of war. Their cell blocks are separated into political factions, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PLO. In the prison, there are no drugs and no violence.

These prisoners have won privileges. With money provided by their factions, they get daily newspapers, they watch TV with a choice of 15 channels, and they buy and cook their own food. The leaders meet regularly with their lawyers, who pass messages to their followers on the outside — which means that they can give orders from the inside.

Cohen acknowledges he deals with some very powerful people. "Very strong, very smart people," he says.

But the "very strong, very smart" people aren't just men. There's the Hasharon Prison for Women, where inmate Amna Muna explains that many of the women are doing time for planning to be suicide bombers.

Muna wasn't looking to blow herself up. She was looking for fame. She wanted to attack an Israeli in a new way — so she struck up a romance over the Internet with a 16-year-old Israeli boy named Ophir. She said her name was "Sally" and she wanted to have sex.

"Let me read you some of the exchanges you had with Ophir on the Internet. You wrote to Ophir, 'Did you ever have sex with a lady?' Ophir replied, 'I'm only 16 and a half. How many times do you think I had sex?' You wrote, 'Do you want sex with me?' What's it like hearing those words now?" Simon asks her.

"The same," she replies. "I know that I don't want to make sex with a boy or with any, with anyone. The aim was to kidnap him and to let all the world know what our families felt when they killed our sons."

She invited Ophir, over the Internet, to meet her in Jerusalem. He boarded a bus and she picked him up at the station.

Asked what Ophir looked like, Muna says he was "cute."

They left Jerusalem and headed for the West Bank. Muna was driving. She pulled over on the side of the road. Two of her friends approached with machine guns, and ordered Ophir out of the car. When he refused, they riddled him with bullets. His body was found two days later.

Muna claims she doesn't know what happened. "I was there. But I don't know exactly what happened. I was in a shock."

Asked if she feels guilty, Muna says, "I'm guilty because a human being (was) killed, and I was the reason. … But I think that I help my people, help my people. Till now, all the world talking about my case."

"Are you proud of that?" Simon asks.

"I have to be proud. There is something inside me all the time telling me I am kind inside myself, and I will continue to be kind," she answers.

"I'd like to hear you tell Ophir's parents that, that you're kind. I'd like to hear you tell them that, and I'd like to see their faces when you tell them that," Simon says.

"They will not understand me," Muna replies. "They will not understand me. But they have to understand that it's a war, it's a war."

Muna is continuing her war behind bars. There are elections in these prisons, and she campaigned hard to become leader of the women prisoners. She won, hands down.

Why do the Israelis allow this? They need prisoner leaders to deal with. In jail, Israelis and Palestinians have to coexist. In fact, this is one of the few places in the Middle East where the two sides actually talk to each other.

If you want to see that happening, you should see Israeli Major Yuval Biton. He's always talking to the inmates. That's when he's not working his day job as the prison dentist, seeing to the cavities and root canals of the killers.

"You're dealing with some very dangerous men," Simon remarks.

"Maybe outside," Maj. Biton replies.

He says he doesn't think these inmates are a danger to him inside the prison, and says he is never afraid one of them will attack him. When he is treating the inmates, Biton says he is alone with them in the room.

Asked if he is concerned that one of the prisoners, some of whom are pretty big, might attack him, Biton says, "He need to be crazy to attack me. I assist them. And they understand it."

Before they were jailed, these Palestinians only understood Israelis as armed soldiers. But in jail, they learn Hebrew and they take courses at Israeli universities. Prison authorities told 60 Minutes that many of them become more pragmatic while they're behind bars. But make no mistake, all the prisoners we talked to see themselves as disciplined soldiers — loyal to their organizations, committed to the struggle.

Asked if he ever escaped from jail and was asked by Hamas to kill Israelis again, Abdullah Barghouti says, "I will make it again."

"Again, again, again," he says. "If my organization, she say 'You should do it,' I will do it, and I will close my eyes."
Produced By Michael Gavshon/Solly Granatstein