The female security guard who gave her life to stop a suicide bomber from entering a shopping centre in the northern town of Afula on Monday was the second guard in a month to die defending others from Palestinian suicide attacks.
The blast, which occurred when the bomber tried but failed to enter the shopping centre, left three people, plus the bomber, dead, and 30 injured. It was the fifth suicide bombing in 48 hours.
Although she paid with her life, the guard’s actions averted a much worse bloodbath which could have taken many more lives, police said.
Last month, another suicide bomber hit the Kfar Saba railway station just north of Tel Aviv, killing himself and the security guard, and at the end of April, yet another guard was badly wounded when he tried to prevent a bomber from entering the seafront bar where he was working in Tel Aviv.
On that occasion, three people died along with the bomber and around 50 were injured in the blast, which police said could have been much worse were it not for the swift action of the guard.
The unsung heroes of the bloody 31-month-long Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Israel’s army of civilian security guards are certainly not in the job for the money: paid between 17 to 35 shekels ($3,80 to $7,50) per hour, many of them work 10 hours or more per day with no extra for overtime.
And with the sudden increase of Palestinian attacks, they are once more being thrust into the firing line — particularly in Afula which lies only 18km from the northern West Bank town of Jenin, the self-proclaimed ‘city of suicide bombers’.
”My wife has been calling me every quarter of an hour since she heard about the attack,” admits Moti Siboni (30) who has worked for the last year as a guard outside a school by day and a wedding hall by night.
”You’re always afraid but what can you do — you have to earn a living. But I’m stopping soon because my wife can’t handle it and it’s ruining my life at home,” he admits, saying he’ll have to find a new job.
A few days ago, he spoke to a girl working as a guard at the shopping centre where the bombing occurred, but he doesn’t know if it was the same girl who was killed.
”We spoke about the work and she said she was really afraid all the time,” Siboni says.
”I don’t know how I would react. When you see a suspicious person you have to have your gun ready, that’s what they teach you on the course. But it’s like we’re cannon fodder — the first person to be hurt is always the guard.”
Standing outside the Home Centre do-it-yourself superstore just a few hundred metres from the site of the blast, Valery Kaplan (64) said he received many panicked calls when news of the bombing broke.
”My wife is always asking me to get another job but there is no other work so I don’t have any choice,” he says, resignedly.
”Sometimes you get a group of Arabs who muscle past you just for a joke. God forbid any of them were actually wearing explosives. In the time it would take me to get out my gun, I would be dead,” he says.
”We’re married to our work — it really annoys me when people say: don’t do it,” says Haim Gavron (28) who guards a local supermarket.
”Of course, you are giving up something but what influences you is a sense of responsibility, not the lifestyle nor the money.”
His friend Eli Heyd (22) believes changes should be made to the way guards are deployed to afford them more protection.
”Suicide bombers don’t come to kill two or three people but a large number. Either you shout at them, tell them to stop and then they blow themselves up, or they come right up to you and by that time, it’s too late,” he says.
”It’s turning us into cannon fodder.
”Maybe we ought to change the way of working and start checking people from a distance, then maybe then we will be less like cannon fodder,” he says, pointing out various ways to implement ‘staggered’ security in order to keep a suspicious person at a distance.
”I don’t believe in opening bags — you need to watch the way they dress and their way of talking.”
Not long out of the army, Yael (21) has been working as a security guard outside another local shopping centre for the last three months and admits that not a day goes by when she doesn’t wonder if she will have to face a suicide bomber.
”I’m afraid all the time,” she admits.
”Because of the situation in last few days, the job is no fun any longer. When something like that happens once in a while, that’s one thing, but when it starts happening all the time and security guards are getting killed, you really feel it.”
She took the job because it didn’t require any more experience than having completed army service, and it was a way of earning money before she starts university in the autumn.
Asked how she thinks she would react if faced with someone intent on carrying out a deadly bombing, she hesitates.
”If I was caught in a situation like that, I would do everything to save lives even if it cost me my life,” she says finally after a long pause.
”It’s a hard question — I hadn’t thought about it before now, but from what they taught me, I think that I would do it.” – Sapa -AFP