An Israeli defense system missile launched Saturday from the southern city of Sderot towards the Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP
The Islamic Jihadthe target of Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip since Friday, in an escalation that promises to spread, is a Palestinian organization founded in 1981, supported by Iran and engaged in armed resistance against the Jewish state.
Created by the students of the Islamic University of Gaza, it is considered close to the Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled the Palestinian enclave since 2007.
The two groups, supported by Iran – Israel’s enemy number 1 – are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement founded in Egypt in the twentieth century.
Islamic Jihad operates mainly in Gaza, but the group is also present in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, received the president of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Nakhaleh this Thursday in Tehran. Photo: REUTERS
Relations with Iran
The Israeli government assures that relations between the Palestinian group and the Iranian regime, its great enemy, have become closer.
“The leader of Islamic Jihad (Ziad al Najala) is in Tehran right now,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Saturday.
Meanwhile, his country’s army continued to bomb Gaza as part of a “preemptive strike” against that armed group.
Israel claimed it was anticipating possible retaliation for the arrest in the West Bank of one of the perpetrators a few days earlier.
General Hosein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Iranian Republic, assured the leader of Islamic Jihad on Saturday that the Palestinians “are not alone” in their fight against Israel.
Fire and smoke on Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli attack this Saturday. Photo: AFP
History
In 1992 the armed wing of Islamic Jihad was founded, the Al Quds Brigades.
The organization was headed by Fathi Chakaki until 1995, when the leader, also a writer and doctor, was assassinated in Malta by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service.
Considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European UnionIslamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks against Israelis, especially during the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising, 2000-2005).
In 1989 he carried out a suicide attack on a Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus that killed 16 people.
The funeral of Jihad commander Tayseer al-Jabari, killed after an Israeli attack, this Friday in Gaza City. Photo: AFP
Many leaders of the organization are currently in Damascus, Syria.
Islamic Jihad opposes any negotiations with Israel and rejects the Oslo Accords, signed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel in 1993.
Although the organization generally coordinates its operations with Hamas, the current escalation highlights its autonomy of action.
Hamas has not fired rockets at Israel since the escalation began on Friday, as it did in 2019, when Islamic Jihad and Israel exchanged fire for several days after the death of an Islamic group commander in an operation. Israeli, Baha Abu Al Ata.
That was the head of the organization in northern Gaza. His incumbent successor, Taysir Al Jabari, was killed in an Israeli attack on Friday.
Source: AFP
CB
Source: Clarin
