Killers Revel in Kudos of a Us Terrorism Designation

For three months the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades pursued a relentless and efficient campaign of violence, shooting down soldiers at Israeli army roadblocks and dispatching suicide bombers to the Jewish heartland. At long last, they gloated yesterday, they were recognised: the US state department branded the Palestinian militant group a terrorist organisation.

"We are really grateful and thankful. It is a great honour for us to be called a terrorist organisation by the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world," its joint-founder, Nasser Badawi, said.

"Our reaction will be more action - the work of al-Aqsa Brigades will be accelerated."

His words were punctuated by the second al-Aqsa suicide bombing in two days, an attack on an Israeli army checkpoint which injured one soldier.

Mr Badawi, 36, a former sociology student, is one of the original seven founders of the militia, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Al-Aqsa demonstrated its power on Thursday with a suicide attack in Jerusalem: a brazen challenge to the American mission, Israel and even Mr Arafat, to whom the group is supposedly loyal.

Its doggedness serves as a harsh counterpoint to Mr Arafat's efforts to gain America's approval by vowing to punish those responsible for Thursday's bombing, and by continuing discussions on a ceasefire.

He met the US envoy, General Anthony Zinni, in Ramallah yesterday and sent his security officials to talks to their Israeli counterparts.

The Jerusalem bombing also encapsulates the limits of Mr Arafat's influence over his own people, let alone his radical Islamist opponents such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Al-Aqsa's proficiency has convinced many Palestinians that they can drive Israel out of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, just as the Hizbullah guerrillas forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon two years ago: a belief that makes it all the more difficult for Mr Arafat to declare, and enforce, a truce.

The brigades were born in the narrow alleys of Balata, a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus, after a dispiriting day of clashes with the Israeli army in the early months of the Palestinian uprising.

The seven, in their late 20s and early 30s, came of age during the first uprising against occupation in the late 1980s, did stints in Israeli jails, and received training in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Iraq. Most important, they were trusted friends.

More than a year later, al-Aqsa - which takes its name from the mosque built on hallowed ground in Jerusalem - has advanced from sporadic drive-by shootings against Jewish settlers to meticulously planned ambushes of Israeli army posts.

Nobody knows how many fighters it has. It was purposely built as a loose network of regional cells. Its commanders, who grew up together in the Fatah youth movement, answer to no higher authority - and certainly not to Mr Arafat, who has made fitful attempts to disband the group.

"The al-Aqsa Brigades was not formed by an official decision. It was formed by itself and it acts on its own, and we do not receive decisions from officials," Mr Badawi said.

That autonomy has produced a curious hybrid. While the fighters of al-Aqsa remain part of the mainstream and secular Fatah movement, they have adopted the strategies of Islamist radicals. They have staged nearly a dozen suicide bombings since the beginning of the year, breaking two taboos: a Fatah ban on such tactics, and the use of women bombers.

They have also sanctioned attacks in Israel, in defiance of Fatah's policy of confining the uprising to the West Bank and Gaza, since Israel's assassination of the commander Raed Karmi in early January.

After Israel threw its airforce, navy, tanks and ground forces against Palestinian refugee camps in its biggest military offensive in a generation, al-Aqsa decided to concentrate its attacks inside Israel.

"So long as Israel comes into our homes in the refugee camps, we are going to come into theirs, and take action inside Israel," its leader Mohammed Atitti said.

In Balata, Palestinians are highly suspicious of the US ceasefire mission. They say it is a ruse, born of America's desire for war on Iraq.

"I don't think there is a ceasefire in the atmosphere, even after these negotiations, and I don't think there is a ceasefire on the ground," Mr Badawi said. "We are not going to stop because there is no deep desire to stop anything on the ground - neither Israeli or American."

Trail of Blood

Jan 14 Al-Aqsa says it shot dead an Israeli near Nablus

Jan 17 Member of al-Aqsa kills six at a batmitzvah in Hadera, northern Israel

Jan 22 Al-Aqsa gunman opens fire on a bus queue in Jerusalem, injuring 16 people

Jan 27 A female volunteer for Palestinian Red Crescent in Ramallah becomes first woman suicide bomber

Feb 19 Al-Aqsa claims joint responsibility for a raid on a West Bank checkpoint, killing six Israeli soldiers

Feb 25 Al-Aqsa gunman injures eight Israelis at a bus stop in Jerusalem

March 3 Ten Israelis shot dead by al-Aqsa sniper at a West Bank checkpoint

March 2 Al-Aqsa suicide bomber blows himself up in a crowd of mothers and babies in Jerusalem, killing nine

March 14 Al-Aqsa gunmen kill two suspected informers in Bethlehem, dragging their bodies through the streets

March 21 Al-Aqsa suicide bomber kills three Israelis and wounds dozens more in Jewish west Jerusalem