Israel’s prime target: What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad?
Israel has continued its airstrikes on Gaza for a third day in a row, killing at least 27 Palestinians, including five women and five children, while targeting four leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement (PIJ) .
Israeli forces killed Ali Ghali, commander of PIJ’s missile launch unit, in the latest attack on a building in Gaza’s south Khan Younis area.
Since Wednesday, more than 400 retaliatory rockets have been fired from Gaza towards Israel, most of which have been intercepted by Israeli missiles.
What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad?
The PIJ was founded in 1981 by Palestinian students in Egypt with the aim of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and other illegally occupied territories by Israel.
Although the armed group strongly criticizes the Palestinian Authority and its policies, it does not participate in politics and limits its role to military confrontations with Israel.
Iran provides Islamic Jihad with training, expertise and money, but most of the group’s weapons are produced locally.
Although based in Gaza, Islamic Jihad still maintains a significant presence in the West Bank city of Jenin and has leadership in Lebanon and Syria, where it maintains close ties to Iranian officials.
Who are the members of PIJ?
The current Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad is Ziad al-Nakhalah, who was elected to lead the group in 2018. Al-Nakhalah was born in the Gaza Strip in 1953 and became involved in Islamic Jihad in 1982. essential role in forming the military wing of the movement.
Many of the group’s senior members were killed by Israel.
The group’s founder, Fathi Shaqaqi, a doctor from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, was murdered in Malta in 1995.
Last year, Israeli airstrikes killed two senior leaders, Khaled Mansour, who was killed in Israeli airstrikes in Rafah in southern Gaza, and Taysir al-Jabari, commander of the movement’s northern region, and a member of the “military council of the group”. ” – the decision-making body of the group in Gaza.
Al-Jabari was in charge of Islamic Jihad activities in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip during the 2021 attack by Israeli forces, when at least 260 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel during 11 days of fighting.
Al-Jabari had replaced Bahaa Abu al-Ata, who was also killed by Israeli forces in a 2019 attack. Abu al-Ata’s assassination was the first high-profile assassination of an Islamic Jihad figure by Israeli forces since the war in the Gaza Strip in 2014.
The missile unit’s commander, Ghali, was a central figure in Islamic Jihad, responsible for aiming and launching explosives, and a veteran of several battles with Israel.
The PIJ announced that three of its commanders were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday and vowed to “avenge” their deaths.
Does the group pose a major threat to Israel?
The Israeli army said the three Islamic Jihad leaders it killed were responsible for rocket attacks against Israelis in the occupied West Bank.
The spokesman for the Israeli army chief, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said: “Our principle is clear: whoever harms us, we will attack with great force. Our long arm will reach any terrorist at a time and place of our choosing,” he added.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel has led an ongoing campaign of mass arrests and killings in Jenin and other occupied West Bank cities, targeting fighters affiliated with the al-Quds brigades of the PIJ and other Palestinian armed groups.
The military operations are intended to quell a growing shift towards an increasingly organized Palestinian armed resistance in Jenin and Nablus, which emerged after a massive popular outburst of Palestinian resistance in May 2021.
Does international law allow Israel to target the group?
Human rights groups have repeatedly pointed to Israel’s violations of international law in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanez, said during similar attacks last year that Israeli airstrikes against the besieged Gaza Strip are “not only illegal but also irresponsible”.
Her statements came after Israel launched an attack on Gaza in what it characterized as a “preemptive” act of self-defense against the Islamic Jihad group.
Are Hamas and Islamic Jihad the same?
The smaller of the two main Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip, Islamic Jihad vastly outnumbers the ruling Hamas organization, but it has become the driving force in clashes with Israeli forces.
Although it does not have long-range missiles like Hamas, PIJ has a significant arsenal of small arms, mortars, rockets and anti-tank missiles.
“Islamic Jihad is known to oppose the peace process and negotiating approach with Israel. It is waging an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation like Hamas. Islamic Jihad is a very close ally of Iran. Because of the ties to Iran, we see one of the causes of Israel’s attack,” Ibrahim Fraihat of the Doha Institute told Al Jazeera.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are often united against Israel and are key members of the joint operations room that coordinates the military activities of the various armed groups in Gaza.
Following Israel’s incursions into Gaza on Wednesday, Hamas and PIJ issued similar statements promising a “firm response from the united resistance forces, whose unity manifests itself in its greatest form in the field.”
Islamic Jihad sometimes acts independently of Hamas, and relations between the two groups were strained as Hamas pressured PIJ to stop attacks on Israel.