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Home Posts The Severe Blow it Sustained Will Not Stop Islamic Jihad from Challenging Israel

The Severe Blow it Sustained Will Not Stop Islamic Jihad from Challenging Israel
Yoram Schweitzer
14 May, 2023
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) found itself once again fighting alone against Israel, weathering Israel’s full force without benefiting from the active military assistance of its partners in the current conflict. Although PIJ is considered an integral part of the "extended armed resistance front," its partners Iran, Hezbollah, the Shia militias, and even Hamas did not help it attack Israel, and contented themselves with rhetoric and words of encouragement.

PIJ is a veteran terrorist organization that has remained loyal to an extremist ideology since it was founded in the second half of the 1980s. It avoided party institutionalization and the development of political pretensions and a social agenda, and remained loyal only to terrorist activity against Israel. Despite being an organization focused exclusively on terrorism, with the support of its patrons, led by Iran, it has developed military organizational capabilities and frameworks: it has armed itself with missiles, rockets, and anti-tank capabilities alongside the development of weapons manufacturing capabilities in Gaza, including rockets. At the same time, it has adhered to a dedicated secret structure that focuses on carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and in Israeli territory. Alongside these, the organization maintains an active infrastructure in Lebanon and Syria, where it maintains close ties with Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards.

About a week before Operation Shield and Arrow, PIJ led the rocket attack on Israel in following the death of hunger striker Adnan Khader, a member of the organization, using his death to justify the attack and to try, as is its wont, to drag Gaza and Hamas into a military confrontation with Israel. The organization was surprised when it suffered an Israeli surprise attack that cost it dearly with the elimination of six of its senior military commanders in charge of the rocket array and operations, as well as and significant damage to its operational infrastructure.

It is clear that the focused and limited Israeli campaign was not intended to defeat PIJ in this type of military round, but to weaken the organization and at the same time signal to its partners in the "armed resistance front" that Israel has not weakened militarily despite its internal crisis. Although spokesmen of PIJ and its partners will highlight its achievements in standing alone against the Israeli war machine and its success in continuing to fire for several days into the cities of Israel, including Tel Aviv and the outskirts of Jerusalem, and (allegedly) exhausting the citizens of Israel without Israel’s being able to stop it, the organization came out of the event beaten military.

PIJ will be forced to realize that Hamas does not intend to absorb the results of its provocations against Israel and is even willing to use them to its advantage and leave PIJ alone to pay the price due to its independent policy and its unwillingness to submit to Hamas's overall strategy against Israel. The organization will only be able to claim a significant achievement if it succeeds in dragging Israel and Hamas into an extensive confrontation between them. However, even if it failed to do so in the current round, it will not stop trying to bring about an overall escalation in the future as well. Jerusalem Day may be another opportunity for PIJ, where it also has Jerusalem and the West Bank to muster in these continued attempts.

Topics: Hamas and the Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Relations, Operation Shield and Arrow
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      • Iran and the Shi'ite Axis
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      • Lebanon and Hezbollah
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      • Yemen and the Houthi Movement
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