[2] Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed that the attack by Riyashi was a joint operation mounted as a response to weeks of Israeli incursions into West Bank cities that had left about 25 Palestinians dead.
[2] Riyashi was the first female suicide bomber sent by Hamas whose spiritual leader at the time, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had initially objected to the involvement of women in such actions, altering this position shortly before his assassination by Israel in March 2004.
[4] Wearing combat fatigues and holding an automatic rifle with a rocket-propelled grenade in the foreground, Riyashi said that since age 13 she had dreamed of turning "my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists".
"[2] Riyashi detonated a 2 kg bomb inside a building where the thousands of Palestinians who cross each day from Gaza to work in a neighbouring industrial zone are processed.
[10] Hamas received widespread criticism from among Palestinians, and even among some supporters, for deploying a young mother as a suicide bomber and for publishing photographs of Riyashi posing with her children and weapons.
"[11]"Last Wednesday, the [Israeli] security forces' sirens at the Erez crossing sounded when the Palestinian lady Reem Saleh Al-Riyashi approached them.
Reem met her death as a Shahida embracing her rifle, underlining with unprecedented courage her love for her two small children – her son of three and her daughter of a year and a half – martyring herself in defense of land, honor, family, and the [previous] Shahids.
Despite her strong motherly instincts ... Reem Al-Riyashi had a heart that was bound to a greater emotion than her feelings towards her children, one that not every woman can bear and implement ... She looked at her place in paradise and at the long columns of children martyrs and their parents and decided not to falter, because after all she would be a source of pride for her own children ... Before Reem Al-Riyashi there were six female martyrs… Certainly each one of them had the same emotions as all other women, but they were not interested only in matters that occupy women in the here and now, they were human souls walking among human beings and carrying within them the traits of angels and supreme human aspirations..."[11]"Yesterday, the Palestinian mother Reem Al-Riyashi sacrificed herself, and by so doing joined the columns of the brave Jihad warriors and broke the atrocious and troublesome Arab silence, the helplessness, and the retreat that precede failure and disintegration.
It is an act of belief and it is the correct path, because the fall of one Jew, whether soldier or civilian, is a great accomplishment in times of decline, subservience, and submissiveness, as a way to undermine the plan to 'Jewify' all of Palestine."[11]"...
Its results were ideal: four killed and 10 wounded, Israeli military personnel specializing in humiliating Palestinian workers seeking a crust of bread.
The hosts create a musical re-enactment video of Riyashi's preparation for martyrdom that they display for the children in an attempt to explain that "her homeland [was more precious than] her own flesh and blood."