Martyrs In The Making

At Friday's funeral of a 24-year-old kindergarten janitor who blew himself up the day before in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Israeli soldiers, mourners read aloud a note the bomber left, asking others to follow his example.

Nabil al-Arair, who injured an Israeli soldier when he detonated some 13 pounds of explosives strapped to his back, was a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, reports CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins.

The group's spokesman, sheik Abdallah Shami, warns there will be more suicide bomb attacks. He says all Israelis are legitimate targets.

"Why should we respect the lives of Israeli civilians," asks the sheik, "when they don't respect the lives of our civilians?"

Israel's security services were already alarmed by the recent release of what they call "terrorist masterminds" from Palestinian jails and say Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has given "a green light" to terrorists.

A Hamas spokesman revealed earlier this week that representatives from his group, Islamic jihad, Fatah and other Palestinian political factions meet every day. He said the meetings coordinated rock-throwing and other protests, not the work of Palestinian gunmen.

But another Hamas representative, Abu Shanab, when asked, said the conclave compared to a war council.

"All Palestinians are now under an Israeli war," said the spokesman, Abu Shanab. "We are trying to be united, trying to confront this war and we are trying to defend ourselves against this war."

In the mid-1990s, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched a wave of suicide bomb attacks against Israel. Scores of Israelis were killed in the attacks in markets, on busy streets and on buses.

Cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces helped reduce the number of bombings in the past few years. Only one bombing has killed an Israeli since Ehud Barak became minister — that one on September 27, the day before the current round of clashes erupted.

Now, with tensions high and Nabil al-Arair's example, Israel fears they will begin anew.

As four Palestinians died in clashes elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza Friday, Islamic militants, chanting "We want a big bomb!" warned at mass rallies that they would unleash more suicide bombers on Israel.

In Nablus, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas marched through the West Bank town. "The only way to respond to Israeli attacks is through military operations," said Salah Darwazeh, a Hamas leader, referring to suicide bombings carried out in recent years by the Hamas military wing.

Such attacks are not terrorism, says Abdallah — this is war, he says, and Palestinians are using the only weapons they have to fight it.

They have plenty of ammunition: There's no shortage of willing suicide bombers on the West Bank or in Gaza, and they're not waiting to be told what to do. It's better to die while killing an Israeli, they say, than to be shot at a distance.

Nabil al-Arair's mother, for one, says her son died a hero and made her proud, and among the thousands attending his Friday funeral — which was broadcast on Palestinian television — might have been the next one willing to die in order to kill.