NP - This Aint No Party

[David Morris]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/international/middleeast/26EGYP.html

EL SHEIK ZWAYED, Egypt, April 21 — One day recently, a 23-year-old Egyptian 
man, Milad Mohammed Hemeida, strode past Egyptian guards near the border 
with Israel, scattering them with a warning: "If anyone comes near me," he 
said, "I will blow myself up."

Mr. Hemeida kept going, security officials said, straight into the narrow no 
man's land that separates the two countries. From the other side, Israeli 
soldiers ordered him to stop, then fired over his head. "God is great!" Mr. 
Hemeida shouted back in Arabic.

One of the Israeli soldiers fired again, felling the young man with a single 
shot.

Mr. Hemeida was not carrying any explosives, officials said. But since his 
death the following day, he has been celebrated in Egypt as the first in a 
new line of Arab martyrs to the Palestinian cause.

The specter is one that has long frightened officials in both Israel and the 
Arab countries that surround it — of promising young Arabs, frustrated by a 
lack of opportunity at home and infuriated by Israel's treatment of the 
Palestinians, joining the fight in a way they have not done since 1948.

It is also a prospect that has suddenly become very real.



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