Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), militant group founded with the goal of liberating historical Palestine through armed struggle and by appealing to the region’s Islamic heritage. It was first formed in the Gaza Strip but also operates in the West Bank.

Formation and ideology

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, founded in 1981, belongs to the later generation of Palestinian militancy. The first generation of militant groups was formed after Israel’s independence in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been living in the territory were displaced. These guerrilla groups, which include Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others that later came under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), sought to confront the new state and place control of the territory under Arab sovereignty. After the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and other Arab territories were occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War (1967), the dream of liberation through pan-Arab activism began to decline, and many Palestinians (like many other Arabs) sought alternative solutions through activist strains of Islam (see Islamism). Palestinians’ reliance on Arab unity was dealt a devastating blow in 1979 when Egypt, the perennial Arab champion of the Palestinians’ cause, signed a peace deal with Israel (see Camp David Accords). That same year, the Islamic revolution in Iran proved to many that Islam could be a successful force for liberation.

The founders of the PIJ—most notably Fathi al-Shiqaqi—previously had been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization founded in Egypt, where Shiqaqi and other Palestinians had sought higher education. Shiqaqi and his associates were sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist outlook, but they believed that the revival of an Islamic society was contingent on extending Islamic rule over the Holy Land (i.e., the historic region of Palestine that includes Israel). The Muslim Brotherhood, which primarily sought to revive Islamic society through internal reform, rejected the notion of centring Islamic revival on the violent liberation of historic Palestine. Nonetheless, the new PIJ movement attracted Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood network, many of whom were sympathetic to the primacy of an armed struggle against Israel.

The PIJ has generally rejected the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an autonomous governing body established in 1994 by the PLO. In the same vein, it refused to take part in any of the elections held by the PA in 1996, 2005, or 2006. It has, however, participated in unity dialogues with other Palestinian organizations, and it sometimes coordinates its activities with the militant wings of Hamas, Fatah, and other groups. It has likewise taken part in pan-Palestinian discussions on the implementation of cease-fires with Israel.

As a paramilitary movement, the PIJ appeals to certain core values rather than to a coherent religious doctrine or political ideology. In statements published in 2018, the group’s leadership endorsed the Sunni interpretation of Islam but otherwise stressed unity and diversity within the Islamic community, affirming the validity of Shiʿi, Salafi, and Sufi movements. Moreover, the PIJ leadership refused the idea of dividing the Holy Land through a two-state solution. Instead, it insisted that all of Palestine should fall under Islamic rule, although residents who practice other religions should not be coerced to convert. The statements affirmed the importance of Christian symbols and sites in the heritage of Palestine but denied the connection of Jews to the region. Instead, they attributed the Jewish presence to colonialism and conflated it with the imposition of Western hegemony in the region.

Activity in the 21st century

The PIJ enjoyed a surge in activity and membership after the outbreak of the second intifada (2000–05), a period of unrest during which progress on negotiating a Palestinian state (see two-state solution) came to a virtual halt. It was at this time that the PIJ also established a firm hub in Jenin, a city in the far north of the West Bank that served as a node in West Bank civil society, in addition to the PIJ’s original hub in the Gaza Strip.

The PIJ’s posture was elevated in 2007 when it became the second most powerful faction in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas, following the latter’s ousting of Fatah from the territory and Israel’s subsequent implementation of a blockade. Although the PIJ was not political in orientation, its activities placed pressure on Hamas—now the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip—to react to, control, and compete with the PIJ, thereby granting it some level of indirect influence on the territory’s public policy. The PIJ was more prone than Hamas to initiate attacks on Israel, thus pushing Hamas to follow suit in order to demonstrate its commitment to the resistance against the blockade. In 2012, after Israel began an air assault on the Gaza Strip, the PIJ became the first Palestinian militant group to launch a rocket toward Tel Aviv. Not to be upstaged, Hamas raced to launch its own rocket toward Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, because Israel generally held Hamas accountable for all attacks coming out of the Gaza Strip throughout the 2010s, Hamas and the PIJ occasionally clashed when the former sought to enforce cease-fires and the latter was unwilling to halt attacks. The PIJ also ventured more visibly into social services in the 2010s than it had before, offering Gazans alternatives to some services provided by Hamas and placing additional pressure on the Gaza Strip’s de facto ruler.

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By the close of the decade, some semblance of a modus vivendi had emerged between Hamas and Israel. Both Hamas and Israel showed restraint while Israel also eased some of its blockade restrictions. Incursions from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) focused increasingly on targeting the PIJ directly, while Hamas refrained from retaliations that would escalate the conflict. This was especially true in 2022, when an increase in attacks on Israelis appeared to stem from Jenin in the West Bank. In August, in both Gaza and Jenin, the IDF killed or arrested several figures within the PIJ movement, but these actions did not lead to a major confrontation between the IDF and Hamas at that time.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas led a land, sea, and air assault that took Israel by surprise and resulted in the deadliest day for the country since its independence. The PIJ took part in the assault and took dozens of Israelis hostage.