Wafa Idris

Attack On 27 January 2002, during the Second Intifada, Idris was transported to Jerusalem by a Red Crescent ambulance, whose driver was part of the plot, and killed herself while committing the Jaffa Street bombing. Idris, wearing a Red Crescent uniform, then detonated a 22-pound (10 kilogram) bomb made up of TNT packed into pipes, in the center of Jerusalem outside a shoe store on the busy main shopping street Jaffa Road. The identity of the bomber wasn't confirmed until three days later on 30 January 2002.

Reaction Shortly after the bombing, before the bomber was identified, Hezbollah's TV channel reported that the bomber was named Shahanaz Al Amouri, from An-Najah National University in Nablus.

According to her mother, although Idris' three brothers were members of Fatah, she herself was not known to be an activist with any Palestinian militant group; her mother later described her as a martyr, and said she hoped that other women would follow in her path. The Arabic London-based international newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat theorized that her divorce and barrenness had led her to commit a suicide attack.

As the first Palestinian woman to undertake such an attack, Idris received more international and regional media attention than Palestinian male bombers and two of the three Palestinian women bombers who followed her in 2002. The exception was Ayat al-Akhras, the third and youngest Palestinian female suicide bomber. The bombing created intense interest in the Arab media, with many newspapers describing Idris as a hero and a nationalist. An editorial published in Egypt's weekly newspaper Al-Sha'ab a few days after the bombing stated, in part, "It is a woman who teaches you today a lesson in heroism, who teaches you the meaning of jihad, and the way to die a martyr's death ... It is a woman who has shocked the enemy with her thin, meager and weak body. It is a woman who blew herself up, and with her exploded all the myths about woman's weakness, submissiveness, and enslavement."