Summary
Title: The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber
Author: Anne Marie Oliver, Paul Steinberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195116003
Pro:
• Based upon primary documents and interviews not otherwise available
Con:
• Authors probably became too involved with their subjects, affecting their perspective too much
Description:
• Analysis of the motives and culture of suicide bombers among Palestinians
• Provides a look inside the world of militants and fanatics
Book Review
Most those presuming to offer an opinion on the matter, and especially those who insist that suicide bombers are little more than a death cult, typically make their pronouncements from afar and without ever having spent time with Muslims generally or those involved in militant movements. Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg, however, spent six years living with Palestinians in Gaza.
The fruits of their research and journalistic efforts are collected in their book The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber. This volume is divided into three parts: a political biography of Hamas leader Sheikh Yasin, translations and photos of Palestinian political graffiti, and finally a look inside the lives of those who become suicide bombers as well as their families.
This book is not what one would normally consider a disinterested, scholarly examination of the phenomenon of suicide bombing generally or Islamic terrorism in particular. Rather than secondary, academic literature it's more like primary literature — Oliver and Steinberg certainly discuss their own views, but the biggest value of their book is how they have collected together so much primary material which would have been otherwise lost by now. This is a book which more academic tomes will use as a primary source for years to come.
Oliver and Steinberg are at once both sympathetic and critical of what they find. They are sympathetic to the Palestinian people, what they have suffered through, and their aspirations for greater respect.
This is hardly surprising given how much time they spent living in Gaza — it's unlikely they would have even been welcome for so long if they didn't fit in well enough. At the same time, though, they have little sympathy for either the ideology or the tactics of Hamas — most of their criticism is in fact directed at the growing hold they saw Hamas exercising over they people they had come to know so well. They recognized very clearly that Hamas was promoting an ideology of violence and hatred which would spiral out of control and lead to even more misery for the Palestinians.
Unfortunately, it appears that while Oliver and Steinberg attempted to maintain a detached perspective, they become far too involved and lost their detachment. They liked the Palestinian people too much, and this seems to have caused them to hate Hamas too much — not unreasonable for the average person, but a problem for people writing such a book. By hating Hamas so much, I think that they were prevented from placing the movement in the appropriate political, religious, and social context. What good does hating them do unless we better understand how such a movement could have arisen and gained such traction with the Palestinians?
Hamas did not appear in a vacuum. Hamas is not popular because the Palestinians hate life or are natural religious fanatics. Oliver and Steinberg simply don't explain how such a group could have developed such power and popularity with the people they came to like so much. They also don't do enough to place the popularity of Hamas in the context of Israeli actions, possibly an even bigger problem.
However, these are flaws in analysis which do not necessarily undermine the value of the book as a primary resource about Palestinians and their suicide bombers. Anyone interested in learning more about why suicide bombers exist and why a person could, from their perspective, rationally choose to kill themselves in a bombing attack should definitely pick up this book and spend some time with it. Oliver and Steinberg offer an alternatingly horrifying and fascinating glimpse into a world few people are directly aware of, but which affects all of us.
