Israel war: Who is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Israel has blamed a hospital explosion in the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 500 people to a relatively small terror group. See who they are.

While Hamas led the October 7 atrocity, its affiliate and arguably more extreme Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), also crossed in Israeland were responsible for killings and kidnappings.
It is believed the PIJ was behind up to 50 kidnappings of Israelis and foreigners.

Israeli Defence Forces today blamed the PIJ for an explosion at a hospital compound in the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 500 people.
The Sunni Islamist terror group is relatively small, with an estimated 1000-8000 members largely based in Gaza and the West Bank, but has widespread associations in Lebanon, Syria and Iranian capital Tehran and its militant arm al-Quds Brigades has been behind numerous attacks on Israel over the years as late as 2020. It was founded in Egypt in 1979 and at times has been at odds with Hamas for not taking a harder line with Israel.

Supporters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad carry flags as they take part in a rally marking the 36th anniversary of the movement's foundation, in Gaza City. Picture: AFP

“No doubt Israel are trying to work out how to root out Hamas but also what might come up in its place, there is no guarantee they will be more moderate, certainly PIJ are more radical than Hamas,” former Office of National Assessments (ONA) intelligence officer and Prime Minister and Cabinet analyst Ian Parmeter said yesterday.

The Australian government first proscribed PIJ as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code in 2004 and has relisted it periodically since.
“Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s ideology fuses Sunni Islamic and Palestinian nationalist objectives, which are intertwined and not easily distinguishable,” the latest government assessment details.“Ultimately, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s goal is the establishment of a sovereign Islamic state within the historic borders of Palestine. Palestinian Islamic Jihad promotes the military destruction of Israel as the only viable means to attain this goal.”

HOW HAMAS BEAT ISRAEL’S IRON WALL

Amid much fanfare in December 2021, Israel completed a three-and-a-half year project to build the world’s most advanced fence to stop the threat from its enemies on the other side.

It was dubbed the “iron wall”, runs 65km along the Israel-Gaza border using 140,000 tons of iron and steel laden with hundreds of cameras, radars and sensors and rose 6 metres high and topped with razor wire.

The electronic “smart fence” also went several metres deep to prevent tunnelling and on the Israeli side was backed by observation towers every 152m, sky high camera-mounted blimps and drones, built sand dunes and regular armed patrols.

It was deemed impenetrable … until it wasn’t.

Hamas fighters parachuting into the Israeli music festival Supernova. Picture: TikTok

Supernova was located near Kibbutz Reim, close to the Gaza Strip. Picture: TikTok

On October 7, more than 1500 Hamas militants amassed undetected and then blasted, flew over or crashed through 29 points along the fence line to commit one of the worst atrocities of its kind the world has ever seen.

The inconceivable failure was not just the wall – arguably the most watched in the world – but the Israeli intelligence that was fooled by Hamas deception tactics and underestimated its firepower, ingenuity and determination.

Members of the Israeli security forces search for identification and personal effects at the Supernova music festival site. Picture: Getty

“It was a spectacular failure,” former Israeli military intelligence officer now Monash University lecturer and Middle East analyst Dr Ran Porat said.

“The bottom line is, similar to 1973, underestimating the enemy’s abilities, looking down on them as stupid and that is horrendously painful and stupid. The problem is the frame of mind what we used to call in intelligence, ‘the ’73 concept’ that the Arabs were deterred, Hamas deterred, what you see is all just exercise.”

Dr Porat is only painfully aware of such oversight. He was an intelligence officer in Israel that graduated from the same analysis division that missed the Arab coalition, led by Egypt and Syria, that launched an extraordinary attack on Israel in October 1973 that became known as the Yom Kippur War.

Ironically it was almost 50 years to the day to this week’s Hamas assault.

Egyptian Third Army soldiers, prisoners of war captured by Israel, sit behind barbed wire at a POW camp near the Suez Canal during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War on November 1, 1973. Picture: AFP

Israeli tanks on the Syrian front during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, a few kilometres from Damascus on October 14, 1973. Picture: AFP

“Shock is such a small word and does not begin to describe what has happened now for this orgy of death and destruction but it was a repeat of what happened with the ‘73 intelligence failure and the failure of the whole operational concept around Gaza.”

That operational concept under Israeli security doctrine pillars is “Hatra’ah (early warning) and Harta’ah (deterrence) and both were neutralised.

It is the third pillar (Hakhra’ah) that demands swift victory in enemy territory that can now only be pursued.

An Israeli flag hangs on the rusty remains of an Israeli battle tank at a memorial from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War on Tel Saki, a hill near the Syrian border in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, on April 25, 2023. Picture: AFP

‘SOPHISTICATED STRATEGY NOT SEEN BEFORE’

Hamas has ruled Gaza since driving out forces loyal to the internationally-recognised Palestinian Authority in 2007, and its rule has gone unchallenged through the blockade and four previous wars with Israel.

One of the militant group’s commanders, Mohammed Deif, masterminded the latest assault dubbed Operation Al Aqsa Flood which he claims to have been plotting for more than a year.

Smoke from Israeli bombardment over the Gaza City seaport. Picture: AFP

There was certainly a new level of sophisticated strategy and planning and expertise not seen before.

But it could have even been much longer with the unique use of powered paragliders emerging in 2014 with a captured Hamas fighter claiming he and a group had travelled to Malaysia as tourists to learn how to fly them for such an attack.

In terms of timing, Hamas has said it launched its attack because Palestinians’ suffering had become intolerable under unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank and the 16-year Israeli blockade of Gaza

Whether that is more true than Hamas’ overall agenda to eradicate Israelis is doubtful. But what is clear in mosques, public squares and streets across the Arab world from Ramallah to Beirut, Amman, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo is celebrating “resistance” to Israel’s occupation of Arab territories.

Social media has been flooded with expressions of support for Hamas including with the hashtag in Arabic #Palestine-is-my-cause among the most widely trending on X, formerly Twitter.

Israeli soldiers stand by an engine from a hang glider that Palestinian militants. Picture: Getty

An engine of a hang glider that Palestinian militants used in an attack on a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. Picture: Getty

The horrors of this war are being socialised more than any other including the Ukraine Russia war with all platforms flooded with propaganda videos and images from both Hamas and the IDF.

Many are gruesome beyond imagination. Hamas filmed themselves brutalising civilians and the IDF the aftermath of that abuse, both declaring the world needed to know what was happening.

Originally published as Israel war: Who is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad