PARIS, June 6: According to Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, Palestinian kamikazes are in effect not suicide bombers, for, he holds, “they do not commit suicide, but rather are martyrs for Islam.”

Sheikh Al Tayeb also defines their acts as being undertaken for reasons of self-defence. “We are unanimous — at Al Ahzar university, the Dar el Ifta (which I head), and the Ministry of Religious Affairs — that their operations are nothing less than acts of self-defence, and done with the sold intention of putting up an effective fight against the (Israeli) force of occupation.”

Also, he notes, during a major interview with French daily Le Figaro, “Islam imposes laws on how wars are to be fought. Combatants are forbidden from killing women, children and monks in convents. Indeed they cannot even cut down trees.”

“These are rules,” he notes, “that apply when one state fights against another, when one army against another army.”

And, if young Palestinians are encouraged to become kamikazes, by liberal Muslims like Sheikh Al Tayeb, it is because, he says, “Israel is fighting an unfair war.” For, he notes, “Israel has a powerful army, with aeroplanes, tanks and helicopters. With these, she attacks Palestinians armed only with light arms. Also, Israel kills women and children.”

“As a result,” he adds, suicide operations — which he refers to as “martyr operations” — “are the only method Palestinians have left to defend themselves.”

The acts might be considered “unacceptable,” he does admit, “if Palestine possessed arms as powerful as those used by Israel. But, the Palestinian resistance having virtually no arms at all, the only things that remain, the only operation that appears to be legitimate, are martyr-operations.”