What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad?
struck al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. Thousands of civilians had been sheltering there, alongside the sick. Palestinian officials say that hundreds died.
Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, and several Arab countries blamed Israel. Israel’s army, citing drone footage as evidence, said that the explosion was caused by a malfunctioning rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another militant group. PIJ, which operates in the West Bank and Gaza, denied the allegation.
On October 18th, on a visit to Israel, President Joe Biden also blamed “the other team", backing up Israel’s account. What is PIJ and what threat does it pose in this conflict? The group was founded by Fathi Shaqaqi, a Palestinian doctor, and Abd al-Aziz Awda, a Muslim preacher born in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. The pair were students in Egypt in the 1970s, where they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest Islamist group.
Mr Awda and Shaqaqi advocated violent resistance against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, they hoped to establish an Islamic state on the territory of the British mandate of Palestine, part of which became the state of Israel after 1948. They thought the Muslim Brotherhood was insufficiently committed to the cause, and began recruiting for their own militant alternative.
After returning to Gaza in 1981 they spent several years building support. The group claimed responsibility for several attacks on Israeli soldiers in Gaza in the early 1980s, at least half a decade before Hamas carried out its first attack. Throughout the 1980s PIJ was a loose network of military cells, with only a few hundred members in total.
Read more on livemint.com
