One of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the contemporary world are the members of the group known as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These men have wreaked havoc and caused mayhem with isolated terrorist attacks across the Middle Eastern region, but mostly they have concentrated their attacks in the country of Israel along the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the most heinous terrorist organization operating in the country of Palestine. It was established in 1979 by two Islamic activists in the Gaza Strip, Fathi Shaqaqi, and Abd al-Aziz Awda. The two men, who had studied in Zaqaziq University, a center of Islamic radicalism in Egypt, rejected the approach of the mainstream Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The Brotherhood maintained that the Muslim world should deal with Israel only after curing its own spiritual and religious problems by returning the masses to Islam and revitalizing Islam. Once Muslim unity was accomplished, the Muslim Brotherhood believed, Israel's destruction would be quickly achieved. By contrast, Shiqaqi argued that Israel, by its very existence, was a source of moral and spiritual corruption that prevented Muslims from remedying the conflicts of their society. They deemed the philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood as too moderate and subsequently split from the group. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad emerged as a separate entity committed to the militant destruction of Israel and the reestablishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a militant organization that violently opposes the existence of Israel and any of its supporters. The Islamic Jihad also opposes moderate and reformist Arab regimes, which are seen as corrupt and contaminated by Western secular values. Designated as a U.S. State Department terrorist organization in 1997, the Islamic Jihad targets Israeli civilian and military personnel in its commitment to the creation of an Islamic regime in all of Palestine, according to the State Department’s 2006 Country Report on terrorism. The group not only has been identified as a terrorist threat by the U.S., but also by Israel, the European Union, Canada, and Australia. The Islamic Jihad unlike other major terrorist groups in the area does not participate in the political process in Palestine. Their ultimate goal is the destruction of the state of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state. This extremist group does have several state sponsors and supporters to keep it running. The organization is presently based in Damascus and its financial funding is believed to come from the Syrian government and Iran. According to U.S. State Department investigative documents, Iran supplies the majority of the Islamic Jihad budget. On several occasions, the U.S. government has criticized Syria for providing a safe haven for the group and allowing the Islamic Jihad main headquarters to remain in the Damascus region. The group also allegedly maintains offices in Beirut, Tehran, and Khartoum. The group operates primarily in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but has also carried out attacks in Jordan and Lebanon. Its main strongholds in the West Bank are the cities of Hebron and Jenin.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a mysterious creature among Palestine's terrorist groups. Like Hamas, Islamic Jihad carries out suicide bombings and other attacks against Israeli targets, and hopes to establish an Islamic Palestinian state. But, Islamic Jihad is much smaller and cannot compete with the Hamas organization's level of support. Hamas also has a larger social and political role in the nation of Palestine than the Islamic Jihad group. Nevertheless, the Islamic organization invokes the ideology of jihad in its violent efforts to liberate Palestine and eradicate the Israeli state. In as much as the Jewish presence in Palestine symbolizes Muslim inferiority in the modern age, commitment to Palestine cannot be framed in the narrow confines of Palestinian nationalism. Instead, it is an essentially Islamic issue and is the key to every serious strategy aimed at the liberation and unification of the Islamic nation. Here in lays the Islamic Jihad's ideological innovation. The jihad or holy war in Palestine entails a commitment to two inter-related goals: the liberation of Palestine and pan-Islamic revival. Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine, since Muslim victory and the elimination of Israel are foretold by Allah's words in the Quran.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, despite being a Sunni muslim group, took inspiration from revolutionary, theocratic Shi'ite ideals espoused during the 1979 Iranian Revolution that established an Islamic regime.
The Islamic Jihad's ideology blended Palestinian nationalist ideas with themes drawn from three other sources: the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood; patterns of activity of the militant Islamic groups in Egypt; and, uniquely among Sunni muslim movements, the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shi'ite leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Shiqaqi praised Ayatollah Khomeini for being the first Muslim leader to give Palestine its proper place in his Islamic ideology. In addition, the Islamic revolution in Iran was a major victory in the struggle against western attempts to exclude Islam from politics, and was uniquely successful in establishing a state founded on Islamic law. Therefore, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad saw Khomeini as the rightful leader of the entire Muslim world.
The Islamic Jihad believes it is in the vanguard of a pan-Islamic revolution that began with the revolution in Iran. Despite its Shi'ite orientation, the Iranian revolution provided a powerful model for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the group has proven flexible in its adaptation of some Shi'ite beliefs.
The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran influenced the group's founder, Fathi Shaqaqi, who believed the liberation of Palestine would unite the Arab and Muslim world into a single great Islamic state. The Egyptian government expelled the Islamic Jihad to the Gaza Strip after learning of their close contacts with radical Egyptian students who assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Islamic Jihad continued its work in Gaza until it was exiled to Lebanon in 1987. While in Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad leadership cultivated a relationship with Hezbollah. Hezbollah provided the small terrorist group with training facilities and logistical aid. Thanks to Hezbollah's support, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad expanded its network in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. While in Lebanon, the PIJ adopted the use of suicide bombing and other forms of terrorism as their principle method of achieving their goals. It was during this time that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was fully integrated into the rejectionist front confronting Israel. In 1989, Shaqaqi moved the official headquarters to Damascus, where it remains, although a small contingent of leaders are still present in Lebanon, according to the U.S. State Department. The continued presence in South Lebanon allowed the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to launch joint attacks in the 1990s.
Fathi Shaqaqi led the organization for two decades until his October 26, 1995 death in Malta, allegedly at the hands of Israeli intelligence agents. He was replaced by Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, a British-educated Palestinian, who taught International relations courses at the University of South Florida from 1990 to 1995. Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah was born in 1958 in a neighborhood of the Gaza Strip. As a high school student he joined the Muslim Brotherhood,
which also funded his tuition at Zagazig University in Egypt. Shallah attended the University from 1977 to 1980. While he was a student there, he solidified contacts with a band of other Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip, including Fathi Shiqaqi, who wanted to emulate the militant Jihad movements that were flourishing in Egypt at that time. Shallah would serve as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's secretary general in the absence of Shiqaiqi. It was estimated that almost 40,000 people attended Shaqaqi's funeral in Damascus on November 1, 1995.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad often attempts to carry out attacks against Israeli targets on the anniversary of his death, although the complete identity of the assassins were never determined. Ramadan Shallah did not possess the precise intellectual or organizational skills of Fathi Shiqaqi. As a result, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's rank among Palestinian terrorist organizations dipped in comparison to the higher position of larger groups like Hamas or Fatah.
That did not stop Islamic Jihad's terror campaign, however, which included the March 1996 suicide bombing of the Dizengoff Center in downtown Tel Aviv, which killed 20 civilians and wounded more than 75, including two Americans.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has always been committed to the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel through a total jihad (holy war). The Palestinian Islamic Jihad wants to reestablish a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state with the geographic borders of the pre-1948 mandate Palestine. The Islamic Jihad advocates the destruction of Israel through aggresive means; it approaches the Arab-Israeli conflict as an ideological war, not a territorial dispute. Islamic Jihad members see aggression as the only way to remove Israel from the Middle Eastern political region. The Islamic Jihad adamantly rejects any two-state arrangement in which Israel and Palestine coexist.
The Islamic Jihad, unlike other Palestinian separatist groups, refuses to negotiate or engage in the diplomatic process. It does not seek political representation within the government of Palestine. The Islamic Jihad is also accused of attempting to hinder the efforts of the 1993 Oslo Accords by launching several terrorist attacks on Israeli targets. The Oslo Accords were a direct meeting between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was intended to be the framework for future negotiations and relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad's main target is Israel, but they also see the United States and Western secularism as an enemy. The Islamic Jihad considers the United States an enemy because of its continunous support for Israel and Israeli initiatives. The Islamic Jihad also vehemently opposes moderate Arab governments that it believes have been tainted by Western secularism and has carried out attacks in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt as a result. The terrorist group is responsible for dozens of attacks and bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian region. As previously mentioned, the Islamic Jihad traditionally strikes at Israeli targets on the anniversary of Fathi Shaqaqi's assassination. It has never struck the United States directly, but has threatened to target U.S. interests if the United States moves its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
At the beginning of the first Intifada, which was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule from 1987 to 1993, the Islamic Jihad had perhaps as many as 250 militants, though figures are difficult to verify. Today, the strength of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's operatives is unknown, but the organization grew considerably in the 1990s and sympathizers are believed to number in the thousands. The Islamic Jihad does very well recruiting suicide bombers and volunteers. The Islamic Jihad finds support in the Islamic universities and mosques in Palestine. Despite its small successes using terrorist tactics, the Islamic Jihad remains a minor movement. One of the main reasons for such small support is because the Islamic Jihad lacks an institutional network like the Hamas or Fatah terrorist organizations. That fact, however, enables Islamic Jihad to focus on its ideological goals and disregard wider political considerations.
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