Palestinian Islamic Jihad

A tiny but fiercely militant Islamic group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is made up of a handful of loosely affiliated factions, the largest of which was led by Dr. Fatih Shaqaqi until his assassination in 1995. Although the PIJ has become well known for its violent tactics and its opposition to a negotiated peace with Israel, the group, headquartered in Syria, is relatively small and mysterious; it is said to receive financial assistance from Iran.

The PIJ was founded in Egypt in the late 1970s by three Palestinian students. Shaqaqi, Abdul Aziz Odeh, [Page 284]and Bashir Moussa, all Sunni Muslims who are said to have been inspired by the Shiite groups that came to power during Iran's Islamist revolution in 1978–1979.

The PIJ has focused primarily on terror attacks against Israel. Shaqaqi had publicly stated that the PIJ shares a name and ideology with many other Islamic jihad groups (e.g., in Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey); however, the groups have little contact with one another. Many of the groups, such as the PIJ, have material and ideological ties to Iran.

After the assassination of Egypt's president Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egyptian government cracked down on Islamic terrorists. Shaqaqi, Odeh, and Moussa were expelled from the county and they returned to Palestine. During the 1980s, the group began organizing in territories occupied by Israel. The PIJ carried out its first successful military operation in 1987, assassinating an Israeli military police captain. Shaqaqi and Odeh were later deported to Lebanon, finding refuge in Damascus, Syria, where they plotted multiple bombing attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets.

The PIJ strongly opposed the Arab-Israeli peace process and continued to attack Israel as negotiations intensified. In 1995, the PIJ blew up a military bus stop near Netanya, killing 19 in an attack that press reports said seemed timed to cause the maximum number of casualties. Just months later, the group took responsibility for a suicide nail bomb in Tel Aviv that killed 13.

In October 1995, on the evening before U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher's trip to Damascus, assassins thought to be working for Israel's intelligence service Mossad gunned down Shaqaqi on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

After Shaqaqi's death, an academic working in the United States, Ramadan Abdullah al-Shallah, became the PIJ's new leader. Al-Shallah left his post at the University of South Florida to take command of the group. His departure caused much controversy, and federal agents arrested one of al-Shallah's Palestinian academic colleagues several years later. Among protests and lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups, al-Shallah's colleague continues to be held without being charged with a crime.

According to the U.S. State Department, the PIJ has never specifically attacked U.S. interests, despite a July 2000 public threat to carry out attacks if the U.S. embassy is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In late 2000, the PIJ continued to work to stall the peace process, initiating several attacks against Israel, including one on October 26 to commemorate the anniversary of Shaqaqi's death.