On Jan. 26, 2023, Israel eliminated a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell in the heart of Jenin, including a leader of the organization's Jenin Brigade, Salahat Ezz a-Din. This operation returned the spotlight to PIJ, a proxy organization that works to change the regional order in the Iranian interest.

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In early August 2022, PIJ threatened violence against Israel unless Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi, the group's leader in Judea in Samaria, was freed. This threat led to Operation Breaking Dawn  (August 5 – 7, 2022). This heightened activity by PIJ, especially in northern Samaria, with an emphasis on Jenin, reflects Iran's efforts to use its proxies to create a balance of deterrence.

There are other examples of Iranian proxies threatening Israel on Tehran's behalf in the Palestinian arena, which Tehran perceives as an Israeli weak spot. Hezbollah, for instance, threatened to strike the Karish gas field with Yakhont (P-800 Oniks) missiles before the signing of the maritime border agreement with Lebanon; Hamas warned that Israel would regret holding its annual flag march in the capital on Jerusalem Day.

What is common to all three organizations (Hezbollah, PIJ, and Hamas) is the considerable military assistance and support they receive from Iran. Through the organizations it sponsors, Iran has forged a broad terrorist front that includes the Houthis in Yemen and Shi'ite militia organizations in Iraq and Syria. Iran's proxies strive to create a new equation vis-à-vis Israel – a country that prefers quiet to military operations, even though, in the Middle East, quiet is an elusive thing.

PIJ was established under Iranian influence in the early 1980s. Its founder, Fathi Shaqaqi, authored the book "Al-Khomeini al-Hal al-Islami wa-al-Badil" (Khomeini, the Islamic Solution, and the Alternative). This book views the Iranian revolution as the model for a comprehensive Islamic revolution that will foster a widespread Islamic renaissance.

Since the 1980s, following a series of Israeli actions, the group's leaders, including current head Ziyad al-Nakhalah, have been living in Syria. PIJ does not have an extensive dawah (Islamic charity) infrastructure like Hamas and concentrates primarily on terrorist activity against Israel. According to its leader, "Resistance is the only choice with which we can restore our people's rights."

PIJ states repeatedly on its various websites that jihad and the struggle against Israel will be "eternal until victory." Its spokesmen say jihad is legal (according to Islamic law) and national duty. Its jihad activity in Judea and Samaria is based on an array of cells spread across Jenin, Tulkarem, and other districts, similar to Gaza.

On Aug. 2, 2022, the Jerusalem Brigades, the military wing of PIJ, declared that the jihad would continue until victory over the enemy. This statement came against the backdrop of the death in Jenin of 17-year-old PIJ operative Derrar Alkafarini. While statements of this kind are common on the group's websites, PIJ does not require any special pretext to threaten or attack Israel. The group's recent stepped-up activity stems from something deeper: namely, its relationship with Iran.

On Jan. 5, 2023, al-Nakhaleh declared that the role model admired above all by PIJ fighters is Qassem Soleimani. He described Soleimani as a martyr-hero and a brave fighter honored by all the resistance fronts and their offshoots. Soleimani was the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force chief assassinated by the United States in January 2020. In its publications, PIJ sets forth its aim to conduct a terror attack to mark the anniversary of his death. At the January gathering, al-Nakhalah also expressed his esteem for beloved comrade and great commander Karim Younis, who was freed last month after 40 years in prison for the murder of Israeli soldier Avi Bromberg in 1980.

PIJ's threats to attack Israel if it did not release Sheikh Saadi marked the first time the group had conveyed through the media, and in Hebrew, a clear ultimatum with regard to the freeing of a prisoner. PIJ highlighted Sheikh Saadi's medical condition and made much of the court's refusal to permit the publication of his photograph. A declaration by the Jerusalem Brigades on Aug. 1, 2022, stated: "We announce a general mobilization and a heightening of the [operational] alert in response to the call to fulfill [our] duty toward the treacherous enemy that assaulted the great commander Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi and his family a short time ago in Jenin."

PIJ is voicing new threats following the killing of the group's operatives in Jenin, including grandsons of Sheikh Saadi who were themselves well-known fighters. Threats in Hebrew on Facebook include a declaration of revenge: "The sons of Islamic Jihad are coming." PIJ'S issuing of warnings in Hebrew is a form of psychological warfare that the group, which receives most of its budget from Tehran, is developing with Iranian assistance.

PIJ is more than a terrorist organization with a broad pan-Islamic outlook blended with Palestinian nationalism and does not operate in a vacuum. Together with Hamas and Hezbollah, PIJ represents a "resistance axis" that seeks to fashion a new strategic equation vis-à-vis Israel in Iran's interests. This new equation is essentially a kind of protection racket. Quiet on Israel's borders, in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria will entail significant concessions and sacrifices regarding Israeli sovereignty and the IDF's ability to act.

PIJ's struggle against Israel is driven by the Iranian desire to heat up the West Bank front, including east Jerusalem, particularly against the backdrop of the approaching Ramadan. Actions by PIJ have the potential to aggravate the security situation and lead to the suspension of Israel's security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, as occurred after the Jenin operation. Israeli decision-makers must understand the nature of the struggle and continue to act against PIJ's entrenchment as a significant military force in the West Bank. This is essential in order to prevent the "unity of the fronts" that Iran is trying to achieve through proxy organizations, with PIJ at the forefront.

Feature on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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To what extent is a party whose roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and whose history is enmeshed with the struggle against Zionism and the State of Israel, capable of renouncing its religious and national objectives and settling for municipal achievements?

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This question is especially pertinent in light of the inevitable clashes between Israel and Hamas, which is the sister movement of Israel's United Arab List (Ra'am).

From the inception of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1920s, its founder, Hassan Banna, characterized the "Palestine problem" as a central issue for the Muslim world and did his utmost to support the struggle against Zionism. The Muslim Brotherhood took part in the "Arab Revolt" (1936-39) in Mandatory Palestine and sent volunteer forces to take part in the 1948 war. It is not by chance that the opening of the Hamas Covenant—Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood—quotes Banna's vow that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it, just as it obliterated others before it."

The Israeli Islamic Movement was established in the 1970s by Abdullah Nimr Darwish of Kafr Qassem. At first, the movement focused on charitable and dawah (religious outreach) activities like founding mosques and organizing groups for Koran and religious studies. In the late 1970s, Darwish established the Usrat al-Jihad (Family of Jihad) organization, which engaged in terror activity in Israel. As a result, Darwish and his comrades were arrested, but they were freed in the 1985 Jibril deal.

From that point on, Darwish took great care to emphasize that he acted within the bounds of Israeli law while urging Palestinians and their sympathizers to continue the struggle against Israel. The Oslo Accords precipitated a split in the Islamic Movement between the Southern Branch, headed by Darwish and Ibrahim Sarsur, who favored participation in the Knesset, and the Northern Branch, headed by Raed Salah and Kamel Khatib, who opposed such participation. In November 2015, the Northern Branch was declared illegal and its leaders put in prison, where they remain. The Southern Branch, in striking contrast, is now represented in the Knesset by the Ra'am Party, which is also part of the governing coalition.

The Southern Branch's support for participating in the Israeli political system was explained in 2006 by Sarsur, then head of the Ra'am Party, who declared, "Our participation in the Knesset elections does not annul our ideology, according to which the rule over the land, or at least over Arab and Muslim land [including what is now the State of Israel], must be Islamic rule under the leadership of a caliph."

It comes as no surprise, then, that the Southern Branch has expressed open support for the Palestinian "armed struggle against the occupation" in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and for sister-movement Hamas in particular. "We are certain that Hamas will lead the Palestinian people to advancement and to achievements," declared Sarsur after Hamas's overwhelming victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. "The Palestinians elected Hamas so it would lead them to achievements, not disasters, and we think the approach of [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert is aimed at pushing the region into a dark tunnel. The world must honor the decision of the Palestinians."

The movement's newspaper, as-Sirat, from its inception to the present day has offered positive coverage of Hamas alongside anti-Israeli expressions and open anti-Semitism. In December 1989, for example, when Darwish was editor of the paper, it claimed that "Satan cultivated the claim of the Nazi race's superiority to humanity in general. Now its descendants claim the superiority of a certain race over all others. Satan has found his agents, flesh and blood, who joyously carry out his satanic doctrine. Whoever respects himself must stand against Satan and his army. Only the legion of faith, when it is unified, can overturn his counsel."

The anti-Semitic motif of the Jews as Satan's soldiers appears frequently in Muslim Brotherhood publications, including the Hamas Covenant—usually in the context of the hadith on the great battle of Judgment Day in which the Muslims will annihilate all the Jews of the earth.

Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas's promise, when taking the oath of office for the Knesset, "to return the occupied lands that were confiscated from our people," did not come out of nowhere. While for westerners and Israelis the term "occupied territories" refers to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel during the 1967 war, as far as the religious scholars of the Muslim Brotherhood are concerned (not to mention the Palestinian national movement including the PLO, alongside the overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs), all Israeli territory is "occupied land."

Indeed, the ideological differences between the Northern and the Southern Branches are minor, as attested to in 2011 by Kamel Khatib, deputy head of the Northern Branch: "At the current stage there are understandings between the two branches of the Islamic Movement, and I hope this will take the form of the unification of the movement. Especially now that the head of the Southern Branch, Sheikh Hamad Abu Dabas, has proclaimed that if the price of unifying the Islamic Movement is non-participation in the Knesset elections, then they will not participate in them."

Since then significant changes have occurred in the Islamic Movement's status, of which the main one is the outlawing of the Northern Branch. There is still, however, a built-in contradiction between the Islamic Movement/Ra'am's ideology and its pragmatic activities. Thus, for example, the Islamic Movement operates the nonprofit Al-Aqsa Foundation, which brings worshipers to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque so as to bolster the Islamic presence on the Temple Mount and hinder Jews from entering it. The Islamic Movement also sponsors incitement-fraught rallies against alleged danger to the mosque and runs fundraising drives for its upkeep.

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During the 2021 riots, the Islamic Movement held rallies supporting the Israeli Arabs of the mixed cities against "the state authorities' aggression," and the movement's websites called for demonstrations (i.e., riots) by thousands in Akko and Jaffa. The Southern Branch also identified with Hamas during the latest Gaza war, at a time when the terror organization was raining thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel's cities and villages.

It must then be asked how long and to what extent Abbas, as representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Knesset and the Israeli government, will be able to settle for municipal achievements for his constituents while covering up the ideological objectives that guide his path.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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