The Idris family is average -- no richer, no poorer than the rest of the Amari camp's 8,000 residents, says a director of the camp's youth club, who declines to give his name. They were originally refugees from the town of Ramle, in what is now Israel, like many others in the camp. Wafa's father died years ago and her brothers looked after her and her mother.

The house where Wafa lived with her mother during the last few years of her life is dilapidated and messy. Chickens pick grains on the living room floor. Wafa's diploma from the six-month Red Crescent training course, alongside her graduation photo, decorates the mostly bare walls. After she got divorced, Wafa moved back in with her mother, the marriage having failed to produce children, her relatives whisper. Since then her life consisted of caring for her mother, who has a heart ailment, and her volunteer work.

The residents of the Amari camp have evacuated the Idris home and the houses immediately around it, in anticipation of Israeli retribution. In the nearby home of a friend, the women of the family comfort Wafa's 60-year-old mother, Wasfia. She says between sobs that she would never have expected her daughter to do what she did. "She looked like her normal self when she left in the morning," she says. The rest of the family, friends and neighbors close ranks to deliver a deliberate message: "She was not depressed," says a Fatah member at the house, an assistant to Security Chief Jibril Rajoub, as it happens. "She did it out of nationalistic motives, nothing else. She was not sad or religious. She didn't wear a head scarf. We are all proud of her choice."

It is still unclear whether Wafa intended to blow herself up or whether she was carrying the bomb for somebody else. An unofficial statement by Fatah's militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades only says that she was "martyred" in the operation. The Israeli police do not classify her as a suicide bomber, just a "bomber." It is possible that Wafa was acting as a courier and that the intended bomber was actually nearby when the device exploded prematurely. The man rumored to be her contact is said to have been lightly wounded and is receiving treatment at an Israeli hospital.

Even if Wafa was accidentally blown up, it is still remarkable that a woman was involved in such an operation. In fact, Wafa's death has sparked a debate among Palestinians about the role of women in the fight against Israel. A spokesman for the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza has said that there is nothing in the Koran that would bar a woman from "martyrdom." Traditionally, however, women have been limited to less exposed roles.

"We are proud of her," says Hanan, a 21-year-old English literature student at Al-Najjah University in Nablus. Hanan wears a head scarf and voted Hamas in the student elections last October. The student council is dominated by the Islamic Bloc, which is backed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "It is good that a woman did this because now the Israelis are facing the whole of the Palestinian people," says Hanan.

Women should take a more active part in the intifada, argues Hanan, even though they are more limited in what they can do than men. "In our society a woman is less free to do what she wants and go wherever she wants but there are also advantages." She suggests that Israelis will now feel even less secure because all Palestinians, men and women, can carry bombs. "I would love to give my life for Palestine," says Hanan. "Maybe one day I will have the courage."

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