Hamas gets all the press. But there's another smaller, more radical terror group that somehow manages to make it seem almost moderate. This group blazed the trail on suicide attacks, it brainwashed a generation of Palestinians in schools and summer camps, and it has a surprising origin story involving a nerdy doctor. Meet the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Our story begins with the man who started it all – Dr. Fathi Ibrahim Abdulaziz Shaqaqi. Dr. Shaqaqi was born in a Gaza refugee camp, but his intellect allowed him to study medicine in Egypt. It was there that he was drawn to dangerous Islamist ideologies that would alter the course of his life. He mingled with an Islamist group whose ideology was so threatening to the Egyptian government that the organization was banned. He was also inspired by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the radical who overthrew the Iranian Shah and turned Iran from a relatively liberal secular state into an intolerant religious one.
Fueled by his dreams, he ultimately moved to east Jerusalem, where he worked as a physician by day, and a revolutionary by night. In the 80s, the Palestine Liberation Organization began to flirt with the idea of diplomatic negotiations with Israel. But Shaqaqi thought this was a huge mistake and believed the only way to deal with Israel was armed resistance. He didn't want to entrust the future of his homeland to a secular body that didn't share his vision for an Islamist future.
According to Shaqaqi, there were two categories of Palestinians. The nationalists talked about liberating Palestine, but they had forgotten about Islam. And the traditionalists talked about Islam and an Islamic state, but they had forgotten about Palestine. He had to solve this issue to make the crossing point between nationalists and Islamists, so he started recruiting other like-minded Palestinians. That's when Palestinian Islamic Jihad was born.
It wasn't long before Shaqaqi caught the attention of Israeli authorities. After being interrogated by Israel, He boasted that authorities had deemed him extremely dangerous due to his fusion of religious and nationalist ideologies. PIJ's first attacks came in the mid-80s. in 1988, Shaqaqi was arrested, thrown in an Israeli prison, then deported to Lebanon. He may have been banished, but he wasn't defeated. Against the odds, he managed to thrive and reorganize the PIJ from abroad. That may have been due, in part, to his charisma and quirky personality. He was a jolly guy who would chuckle while talking about terror attacks he orchestrated. He proudly explained to an interviewer that before he became a politician and the leader of Islamic Jihad, he was a human being and a poet. He attested to reading Shakespeare, Dante, and T.S. Eliot.
His unique mix of intellectual charm and violent zealotry worked to convince people to join his cause in Lebanon. He found a way to form close connections with the country's most powerful terrorist group. He eventually managed to land his dream opportunity, a chance to travel to Iran to meet his ideological role model, the Ayatollah himself. Shaqaqi talked his way into a steady stream of financial and military aid from Iran, allowing PIJ to step up its attacks.
In 1987 they orchestrated their first attack that killed Lt. Ron Tal, the commander of the Israeli military police in Gaza. Next, in 1989, one of the members grabbed the steering wheel of an Israeli bus and ran it off a cliff. The terrorist survived, but this still goes down in the record books as the first Palestinian suicide attack. Less than a year later, they ambushed an Egyptian tour bus with Israelis on board. Then, they started bombing civilian infrastructure: a Tel Aviv mall, a bus, and a restaurant in Haifa.
With every attack, their popularity skyrocketed. The pool of recruits kept growing. Many new recruits were excited to volunteer for suicide attacks, but he took a serious approach to these recruits, saying, "We choose only those who insist. My orders are to convince them not to go, [in order] to test them. If they still insist, they are chosen." Shaqaqi took his radical ideas and turned them into a well-organized, well-funded terrorist group devoutly committed to Israel's destruction. And indeed, PIJ always seemed one step ahead of Israeli authorities. Until, in 1995, after more than a decade of attacks, Israel managed to neutralize the doctor.
Mossad agents were staking out Fathi Shaqaqi, who frequently stayed at the Diplomat Hotel during his visits to Malta. After blending into the hotel lobby scene for days, the agents finally spotted him. They discreetly followed as he leisurely strolled through the streets on a shopping excursion. As Shaqaqi was leaving a store, two agents on a motorcycle made their move. One agent, equipped with a silenced pistol, swiftly and silently delivered two shots to Shaqaqi's head and one to his back, executing the mission with chilling precision. Without their leader, PIJ initially descended into chaos. But Shaqaqi's ideology was strong enough to outlive him, and the terrorist group managed to bounce back, and even challenge Hamas.
What is the difference between the two groups? PIJ is much smaller than Hamas. Where Hamas is a broad, community-based movement, PIJ is more like an elite order. It's organized with a secretive, cell-based structure. For PIJ, violence is the only way. Anything that normalizes Israel, even a little, is unacceptable. Israel must be destroyed. Peace must be rejected. Hamas, on the other hand, has been a little more willing to work within the system.
During the second Intifada, while Hamas agreed to temporarily align with the Palestinian Authority and pause their suicide bombings, the PIJ defiantly vowed to continue their attacks. "We have no other choice," a PIJ official declared at the time, "We are not willing to compromise." A few years later, Hamas decided to participate in PA elections, but PIJ refused. They couldn't accept the PA as a legitimate government because they had already taken too many steps towards normalization with Israel.
When PIJ launched a series of attacks against Israel in 2022, Hamas refused to join. In retrospect, it is now clear that Hamas was trying to lull Israel into a false sense of security and would eventually launch a massive terror attack in 2023. But they were, for a time, trying to distance themselves from PIJ. This only boosted the popularity of PIJ which accused Hamas of collaborating with the enemy.
To understand the PIJ's widespread popularity, one must study their indoctrination methods. Schools and summer camps taught children to hate Israel and reject peace. A summer camp director described their programming, saying, "We teach the children the truth, how the Jews persecuted the prophets and tortured them. We stress that the Jews killed and slaughtered Arabs and Palestinians every chance they got. As long as Jews remain here, from the river to the sea, they will be our enemy and we will continue to pursue and kill them."
A 2012 kindergarten graduation from a PIJ school had children dressed in PIJ uniforms holding toy rifles. During the ceremony, they put on a play about how Israel supposedly treats Palestinian prisoners, featuring handcuffed kids in cages and reenactments of torture. According to the kindergarten's director, "It's our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is." One of the kids proudly declared, "I love the resistance and the martyrs in Palestine and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing." Those kids would be around 17 now, ready to take on the enemy, as they did on October 7.
One of the kids proudly declared, "I love the resistance and the martyrs in Palestine and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing."
During the murderous attacks, most of the terrorists were either members of Hamas or PIJ. On October 8, the current leader of the organization Ziyad al-Nakhalah claimed that the group was holding more than 30 hostages. "They will not return to their homes until we release all of our prisoners from the enemy's custody," he declared. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi even called to congratulate him, saying, "You've really made the Islamic community happy with this innovative and victorious operation."
