Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is the second-largest armed faction in Gaza, an Iran-funded and Iran-directed jihadist organization founded in the late 1970s whose platform rejects any negotiated peace with Israel and defines its destruction through violent jihad as a religious obligation. Unlike Hamas, PIJ runs no schools, clinics or elections; it is a smaller, more ideologically rigid vanguard whose sole declared purpose is armed struggle, financed almost entirely by Tehran. It has carried out dozens of suicide bombings since the 1990s, has twice dragged Gaza into full wars with Israel without Hamas even joining the fighting, and its Al-Quds Brigades took part directly in the October 7, 2023 massacre and hostage-taking. The United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Israel all designate it a terrorist organization.
Origins: born out of the Iranian revolution
Section titled “Origins: born out of the Iranian revolution”PIJ formed among Palestinian students in Egypt in the late 1970s, led by Fathi Shaqaqi and Abd al-Aziz Awda, both former members of the Muslim Brotherhood who broke away because they judged the Brotherhood too slow to take up arms against Israel. Shaqaqi, a physician, had written an admiring 1979 study of Ayatollah Khomeini and drew directly on Iran’s revolution as a model: an Islamic movement willing to seize power through force rather than gradual social work. The group organized formally in the Gaza Strip by 1981, framing the Arab-Israeli conflict not as a territorial dispute but as an “ideological war” that only jihad could resolve. Israel deported Shaqaqi and other leaders to Lebanon in 1988, where they made direct contact with Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a relationship that has defined the organization ever since. Shaqaqi was assassinated in Malta in October 1995, an operation widely attributed to Israel’s Mossad and never officially claimed; Ramadan Shallah succeeded him, and Ziyad al-Nakhalah has led PIJ as secretary-general since 2018, operating mostly out of Beirut and Damascus with regular travel to Tehran.
What it is: Iran’s most direct proxy in Gaza
Section titled “What it is: Iran’s most direct proxy in Gaza”Where Hamas draws on multiple funding streams, including Qatari and other Gulf money, the US State Department has assessed that Iran funds most of PIJ’s budget outright, training its Al-Quds Brigades fighters and setting broad strategic direction as part of Tehran’s wider axis of resistance alongside Hezbollah and the Houthis. PIJ’s own founding platform rejects coexistence with Israel in any form and refuses diplomatic engagement of any kind, a position it has never revised, even as Hamas’s 2017 document introduced language about accepting temporary borders. PIJ does not contest Palestinian elections and holds no seats in any legislature; it has always presented itself as a small, disciplined military and religious vanguard rather than a governing party, with a fighting force historically estimated in the low thousands, far smaller than Hamas’s.
The record: three decades of bombings and rocket wars
Section titled “The record: three decades of bombings and rocket wars”PIJ’s most infamous individual attacks include the Beit Lid junction bombing of January 22, 1995, a double suicide attack that killed 21 Israelis, mostly soldiers, and derailed momentum around the Oslo process; the March 4, 1996 bombing near Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center, which killed 13; and the Maxim restaurant bombing in Haifa on October 4, 2003, in which a suicide bomber killed 21 Israeli Jews and Arabs dining together. Through the Second Intifada of 2000 to 2005, PIJ claimed dozens of additional shooting and bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. Since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, its focus has shifted to rocket and mortar fire, and PIJ has been the trigger, twice, of Gaza wars that Hamas itself did not join: in November 2019, after an Israeli strike killed PIJ commander Baha Abu al-Ata, the group fired roughly 450 rockets into Israel over two days while Hamas stayed out of the fighting entirely; in August 2022’s Operation Breaking Dawn, Israeli strikes killed PIJ commanders Tayseer al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour over intelligence of an imminent attack, and PIJ answered with more than 1,100 rockets in three days. See who attacked first in the Gaza wars.
October 7 and after
Section titled “October 7 and after”PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades fought alongside Hamas’s Qassam Brigades in the October 7, 2023 attacks, crossing into Israeli communities and taking hostages of its own, separate from those held by Hamas; PIJ later negotiated its own hostage releases during ceasefire exchanges. Nakhalah met with Iranian officials, reportedly including IRGC commanders, in the period surrounding the attack, part of the broader coordination among Iran’s regional proxies that also included Hezbollah’s unprovoked opening of the Lebanon front the following day. How much operational advance notice Tehran or Nakhalah had of the attack’s exact timing remains disputed among intelligence services; what is not disputed is that PIJ fighters were on the ground and among the hostage-takers that day.
What critics get wrong about PIJ’s record
Section titled “What critics get wrong about PIJ’s record”The strongest version of the objection: the August 2022 rocket that killed several Palestinians, including children, in the Jabalia refugee camp was initially blamed on Israel by Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and PIJ is sometimes treated as interchangeable with Hamas or credited with Hamas-style social programs. Neither claim survives the record. Israeli and independent open-source investigations concluded the Jabalia strike was a PIJ rocket that fell short, a pattern that has recurred with other misfired projectiles from Gaza. PIJ itself does not run hospitals, schools or a civil administration; its self-description has always been narrower and more purely military than Hamas’s. And while PIJ and Hamas cooperate operationally and share Iranian backing, they remain organizationally distinct, with PIJ periodically escalating on its own timeline in ways that have strained, rather than served, Hamas’s own calculations, a smaller, more rigidly Tehran-directed organization that answers to its own clock.
Related pages
Section titled “Related pages”Hamas · October 7 attacks · Axis of Resistance · Who attacked first in the Gaza wars · Iran’s Ring of Fire · Who attacked first, every war