July 21, 2019 <Back to Index>
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The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Arabic: حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn) known in the West as simply Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a small Palestinian militant organization. The group has been labelled as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia and Israel. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad was created after some members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood believed that the organization did not commit enough effort to prevent Israel from occupying Palestinian territories. They felt as if they were not helping the Palestinian struggle. In 1979, after being inspired by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Fathi Shaqaqi and Abd al-Aziz Awda founded the group to fight for the sovereignty of Palestine and freedom from Israel. Shaqaqi and Awda conducted operations out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. The PIJ continued its work in Gaza until it was exiled to Lebanon in 1987. While in Lebanon, the group was able to receive support from Hezbollah and ultimately developed a close relationship with the Lebanese organization. While in Lebanon, the PIJ adopted any methods within reach to achieve their goals. In 1989, the PIJ moved to Damascus where it remains to this day. The organization's banner leads from a verse in the Qur'an "And those who do jihad for Us, we shall guide them to our paths. And God is with those who do good." In effect, outlining the goals of the movement. The group is currently based in the Syrian capital, Damascus, but there are also offices in Beirut, Tehran and Khartoum. Its financial backing is believed to come from Syria and Iran. The group is primarily in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its main strongholds in the West Bank are the cities of Hebron and Jenin. The PIJ has approximately 50 members as well as recruiting chemical engineers and volunteers. Because of its small size, the PIJ is unable to run large scale meetings to raise funds so instead they rely heavily on other organizations such as Hezbollah for financial support. Islamic Jihad has much in common with Hamas, since both fight against the existence of the State of Israel. The distinction between the groups comes in the order of these priorities. Both groups were formed as offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and receive a large amount of funding from Saudi Arabia. With similar goals, Hamas and the PIJ have worked together on a number of projects. On February 20, 2003, University of South Florida computer engineering professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian was arrested after being indicted on a terrorism related charge. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft alleged at a press conference that Al-Arian was the North American head of the Palestinian "Islamic" Jihad. On December 6, 2006, Sami Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, pursuant to a plea bargain. In November 2006 he was found guilty of civil contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. He served 21 months in prison on that conviction. "Islamic" Jihad is alleged to have used minors as members of its committee. On March 29, 2004, 16 year old Tamer Khuweir in Rifidia, an Arab suburb of Nablus, was captured by Israeli forces as he planned to carry out revenge on Israel. His older brother claimed he was brainwashed and demanded the Palestinian Authority investigate the incident and arrest those responsible for it. After Shaqaqi's death, Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been led since 1995 by fellow founder Ramadan Shallah. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for many militant activities over the years. The organization is responsible for a number of attacks including more than 30 completed suicide bombings. “On December 22, 2001, despite a declaration by Hamas to halt suicide bombings inside Israel, in response to a crackdown on militants by Yassir Arafat, PIJ vowed to continue its terror campaign. PIJ’s representative in Lebanon, Abu Imad Al Rifai, told Reuters, ‘Our position is to continue. We have no other choice. We are not willing to compromise.’” The Palestinian Islamic Jihad have claimed responsibility for the following attacks:
Islamic Jihad has also deployed its own rocket, similar to the Qassam rocket used by Hamas, called the Al Quds rocket. Islamic Jihad also control dozens of religious based organizations in the Palestinian territories that are registered as NGOs and operate mosques, schools and medical facilities that offer free services.
Like other Islamic associations, these are heavily scrutinized by the
Palestinian National Authority who have shut some of them down.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (Arabic: الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين, al-Jabhah al-Sha`biyyah li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn) is a Palestinian Marxist - Leninist organization founded in 1967. It has consistently been the second largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest being Fatah. Currently the PFLP is boycotting participation in the Executive Committee of the PLO. It considers both the Fatah led government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip as illegal due to the lack of new elections to the Palestinian National Authority since 2006. The PFLP has generally taken a hard line on Palestinian national aspirations, opposing the more moderate stance of Fatah. It opposes negotiations with the Israeli government, and favors a one-state solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. The military wing of the PFLP is called the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades. The PFLP is well known for pioneering armed aircraft hijackings in the late '60s and early '70s. The PFLP grew out of the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab, or Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), founded in 1953 by Dr. George Habash, a Palestinian Christian, from Lydda. In 1948, 19 year old Habash, a medical student, went to his home town of Lydda during the 1948 Arab - Israeli War to help his family. While he was there, the Israel Defence Forces attacked the city and as a result most of its civilian population was forced to leave, and marched for three days without food or water until they reached the Arab front lines. Habash finished his medical education in Lebanon at the American University in Beirut, graduating in 1951. In an interview with US journalist John K. Cooley, Habash identified the Arab defeat by Israel as "the scientific society of Israel as against our own backwardness in the Arab world. This called for the total rebuilding of Arab society into a twentieth century society." The ANM was founded in this nationalist spirit. "[We] held the 'Guevara view' of the 'revolutionary
human being'," Habash told Cooley. "A new breed of man had to emerge,
among the Arabs as everywhere else. This meant applying everything in
human power to the realization of a cause." The ANM formed underground branches in several Arab countries, including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, then still under British rule. It adopted secularism and socialist economic ideas, and pushed for armed struggle. In collaboration with the Palestinian Liberation Army, the ANM established Abtal al-Audah, Heroes of the Return, as a commando group in 1966. After the Six Day War of June 1967, this group merged in August with two other groups, Youth for Revenge and Ahmed Jibril's Syrian backed Palestine Liberation Front, to form the PFLP, with Habash as leader. By early 1968, the PFLP had trained between one and three thousand
guerrillas. It had the financial backing of Syria, and was headquartered
there, and one of its training camps was based in as-Salt, Jordan. In 1969, the PFLP declared itself a Marxist - Leninist organization, but it has remained faithful to Pan Arabism,
seeing the Palestinian struggle as part of a wider uprising against
Western imperialism, which also aims to unite the Arab world by
overthrowing "reactionary" regimes. It published a newspaper, al-Hadaf (The Target, or Goal), which was edited by Ghassan Kanafani. In 1967, Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) broke away from the PFLP. In 1968, Ahmed Jibril broke away from the PFLP to form the Syrian backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). In 1969, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) formed as a separate, ostensibly Maoist, organization under Nayef Hawatmeh and Yasser Abd Rabbo, initially as the PDFLP. In 1972, the Popular Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine was formed following a split in PFLP. The PFLP had a troubled relationship with George Habash's one-time deputy, Wadie Haddad, who was eventually expelled because he refused orders to stop attacks and kidnapping operations abroad. Haddad has been identified in released Soviet archival documents as having been a KGB intelligence agent in place, who in 1975 received arms for the movement directly from Soviet sources in a nighttime transfer in the Sea of Aden.
The PFLP joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the
umbrella organization of the Palestinian national movement, in 1968,
becoming the second largest faction after Yassir Arafat's
Fatah. In 1974, it withdrew from the organization's executive committee
(but not from the PLO) to join the Rejectionist Front, accusing the PLO
of abandoning the goal of destroying Israel outright in favor of a binational solution, which was opposed by the PFLP leadership. It rejoined the executive committee in 1981. After the eruption of the First Intifada and the subsequent Oslo Accords the PFLP had difficulty establishing itself in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The boycott of the 1996 elections gave many the impression that the PFLP was irrelevant to developments in Palestine. At that time (1993 – 96) Hamas enjoyed rapidly rising popularity in the wake of their successful strategy of suicide bombings devised by Yahya Ayyash ("the Engineer"). Also, the fall of the Soviet Union together with the rise of Islamism — and particularly the increased popularity of the Islamist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — disoriented many left activists who looked towards the Soviet Union, and has marginalized the PFLP's role in Palestinian politics and armed resistance. However, the organization retains considerable political influence within the PLO, since no new elections have been held for the organization's legislative body, the PNC. As a result of its post - Oslo weakness, the PFLP has been forced to adapt slowly and find partners among politically active, preferably young, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in order to compensate for their dependence on their aging commanders returning from or remaining in exile. The PFLP has therefore formed alliances with other leftist groups formed within the Palestinian Authority, including the Palestinian People's Party, the Popular Resistance Committees of Gaza. In 1990, the PFLP transformed its Jordan branch into a separate political party, the Jordanian Popular Democratic Unity Party. Following the death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the PFLP entered discussions with the DFLP and the Palestinian People's Party aimed at nominating a joint left wing candidate for the presidential elections. These discussions were unsuccessful, and the PFLP then decided to support the independent Palestinian National Initiative's candidate Mustafa Barghouti, who gained 19.48% of the vote. In the municipal elections of December 2005 it had more success, e.g. in al-Bireh and Ramallah, and winning the mayorship of Bir Zeit. There are conflicting reports about the political allegiance of Janet Mikhail and Victor Batarseh, the mayors of Ramallah and Bethlehem, they may be close to the PFLP without being members. The PFLP is powerful politically in the Ramallah area, the eastern districts and suburbs of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the primarily Christian Refidyeh district of Nablus, but has far less strength in the rest of the West Bank, and is of little or no threat to the established Hamas and Fatah movements in Gaza. The PFLP participated in the Palestinian legislative elections of
2006 as the "Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa List". It won 4.2% of the popular
vote and took three of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative
Council. Its deputies were Ahmad Sa'adat, Jamil Majdalawi, and Khalida
Jarrar. In the lists, its best vote was 9.4% in Bethlehem, followed by
6.6% in Ramallah and al-Bireh, and 6.5% in North Gaza. At the PFLP's Sixth National Conference in 2000, Habash stepped down as general secretary. Abu Ali Mustafa was elected to replace him, but was assassinated on 27 August 2001 when an Israeli helicopter fired rockets at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah. The PFLP murdered the right wing Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in 17 November 2001 in retaliation. After Mustafa's death, Ahmad Sa'adat was elected general secretary on
3 October 2001. In January 2002, he was arrested by the Palestinian
Authority under pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom
and imprisoned in Jericho prison along with several other PFLP members accused by Israel of involvement in the Zeevi assassination. The Palestinian High Court
ordered his release, stating that there were no legal grounds for the
imprisonment, but the Palestinian National Authority refused to
implement the court's decision. On 14 March 2006, the Israel Defense
Forces
attacked the prison and, after a 10 hour siege resulting in the death
of two people and the wounding of 35, removed Sa'adat and five other
inmates, arrested them, and took them to Israel for trial. When it was formed in the late 1960s the PFLP supported the established line of most Palestinian guerrilla fronts and ruled out any negotiated settlement with Israel that would result in two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, George Habash in particular, and various other leaders in general advocated one state with an Arab identity in which Jews were entitled to live with the same rights as any minority. Although, the PFLP had dramatically different attitudes between "ethnic Palestinian" Jews and other Jews, believing that especially the Jews from European ethnicity are alien to Palestine and must be expelled. The PFLP platform never wavered on key points such as the overthrow of conservative or monarchist Arab states like Morocco and Jordan, the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes in pre - 1948 Palestine, or the use of the liberation of Palestine as a launching board for achieving Arab unity – reflecting its beginnings in the Pan-Arab ANM. It opposed the Oslo Accords and was for a long time opposed to the idea of a two state solution to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, but in 1999 came to an agreement with the PLO leadership regarding negotiations with the Israeli government. However, in May 2010, PFLP general secretary Ahmad Sa'adat called for an end to the PLO's negotiations with Israel, saying that only a one state solution was possible. The PFLP opposed the 2007 conflict between Hamas and Fatah and believes that the Salam Fayad government is not helpful in solving the conflict. In January 2011, the PFLP declared that the Camp David Accords stood for "subservience, submission, dictatorship and silence", and called for social and political revolution in Egypt.
The PFLP's armed wing, in the West Bank and Gaza, the Abu Ali
Mustapha Brigades, draws much of its support from student organizations
in universities like Al-Quds University (eastern Jerusalem), Bir Zeit University (Ramallah area), An-Najah National University (Nablus), and the Arab American University - Jenin.
The movement has thousands of active or passive activists in the West
Bank, and a few hundred behind bars in Israeli prisons. In December
2009, around 70,000 supporters demonstrated in Gaza to celebrate the
PFLP's 42nd anniversary. The PFLP's leader in Gaza was Dr. Rabah Muhanna. The PFLP gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a series of armed attacks and aircraft hijackings, including on non - Israeli targets:
The PFLP's Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades has carried out attacks on both civilians and military targets during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Some of these attacks are:
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