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FILE PHOTO: A Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant participates in an anti-Israel military parade marking the 36th anniversary of the movement's foundation in Gaza City, October 4, 2023.
What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad?
The Israeli and US governments on Wednesday claimed to have preliminary intelligence showing that the blast that Hamas authorities said had killed several hundred people at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday night was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad? It is an older, but smaller, relative of Hamas. Like Hamas, PIJ is a jihadist organization that seeks to destroy Israel and create an Islamic society in historic Palestine. Based primarily in Gaza, it counts on strong backing from Iran and is considered a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and Israel.
Where did it come from? The organization was founded in the early 1980s as an offshoot of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, during a period when the success of the 1979 Iranian revolution boosted the power and appeal of Islamist politics across the region. Like Hamas, it was an immediate rival to secular movements, like Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, which had dominated the Palestinian national movement until then.
What does it do? In the 1990s, PIJ began a campaign of suicide bombings against Israeli targets and has amassed a large cache of rockets that it periodically fires into Israel from Gaza.
How does PIJ compare to Hamas? PIJ is much smaller, counting only about 1,000 men. And unlike Hamas, PIJ is focused exclusively on armed struggle — it has neither a political wing nor an extensive network of social services.
Do PIJ and Hamas get along? They were rivals in the 1980s, but their shared goals and motivations brought them into strategic alignment from the 1990s onwards. PIJ, lacking a political wing, has sometimes been more risk-averse than Hamas in confronting Israel. In 2018, the two organizations issued a joint statement pledging to work together.Palestinian rescue workers inspect a house after an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza Strip.
The latest from Israel and Gaza
After three days of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip, there are no signs that the crisis is abating.
After Israeli forces took out a number of high-profile PIJ commanders in recent days, the group responded by firing more than 800 rockets at southern and central Israel. Many of those rockets have either been intercepted by missile defense systems, landed inside Gaza, or fallen in vacant areas inside Israel.
But at least one Israeli was killed when a rocket hit a residential building in a Tel Aviv suburb on Thursday, while dozens of Palestinians have been killed, including civilians and children, as Israel pummels PIJ strongholds in the Strip.
It’s notable that Hamas, which governs Gaza, does not appear to have joined PIJ in firing rockets at Israel, but it’s hard to imagine PIJ launching a barrage like this without at least tacit approval from Hamas leadership.
So far, ceasefire efforts mediated by Egypt have proved fruitless: PIJ wants Israel to stop the targeted killing of its commanders, which Jerusalem won’t agree to. Meanwhile, Israel wants the group to stop firing rockets without preconditions.
Explosions light up the sky after the Israeli military struck Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza.
Israel prepares for Gaza escalation
Israel is bracing for fierce retaliatory strikes after taking out senior members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Israeli authorities have told families living in southern border communities to leave their homes, while bomb shelters in central Israel have also been opened.
What’s the trigger this time? Israel conducted air strikes on the Gaza Strip early Tuesday that resulted in the death of three PIJ heavyweights: Khalil Bahtini, the group’s commander for the northern Gaza Strip; Tareq Izzeldeen, the intermediary between PIJ’s Gaza and West Bank factions; and Jehad Ghanam, who headed the military council. Two of the commanders’ wives and children were also killed in the bombing along with other civilians, bringing the death toll to 13. Around 20 others were injured.
Israel’s security apparatus says the militants were responsible for a series of rocket attacks on Israel in recent weeks, as well as attacks against Jews inside Israel.
PIJ, which is backed by Iran, says that it will inflict a heavy price on Israel, which continued to bomb several targets in the Strip on Tuesday, including targeting an anti-tank guided missile crew in southern Gaza.
There are several things to watch in the days ahead.
First, will Hamas join PIJ in striking Israel? The former, which has fought several wars against Israel since forcefully taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, has been at loggerheads with the rogue PIJ for starting fights with Israel before at times when Hamas’ leadership has not sought an escalation. (In 2019 and 2022, for instance, Hamas stayed out of fighting after Israel targeted senior PIJ members.)
Indeed, a coordinated PIJ-Hamas operation would up the ante … significantly. One Israeli minister warned that the Israeli army will assassinate Hamas stalwart Yahya Sinwar, who heads the group’s activities in the Strip, if the militant group joins the action. That would spark a tinderbox.
And will Hezbollah and other militant groups in Lebanon join the fray, causing Israel to fend off attacks on multiple fronts? Hezbollah responded to the strikes by pledging “complete solidarity with our brothers in the PIJ,” while Iran is reportedly urging Hamas to join the fighting.
What about the political implications at home for Israel? In a recent GZERO World interview with Ian Bremmer, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak called the ongoing Palestinian issue “the elephant in the room” amidst ongoing domestic turmoil.
Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, recently boycotted the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, accusing the government of a weak response to recent rocket and terror attacks inside Israel. Ben-Gvir said that Tuesday’s strikes on Gaza were “a good start,” but could Bibi be ratcheting it up now to placate the far-right and prevent the crumbling of his fractious coalition?