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Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Iran Supplies All Weapons in Gaza

The final article in a four-part series examines the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement’s relationship with Iran and other regional parties.
Freed Palestinian prisoner Ibrahim Baroud holds a gun as he carried on the shoulders of Islamic Jihad militants through crowds of people, as he arrives at his home in the northern Gaza Strip April 8, 2013. Baroud, who was convicted of his affiliation with the armed group of Islamic Jihad and for carrying out armed attacks against Israel, was released on Monday after serving 27 years in an Israeli jail, according to media reports.  REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTXYD6

At the end of 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran inspired the founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, Fathi Shakaki, who wrote the book Khomeini: The Islamic Solution and the Alternative out of admiration for the Iranian experience.

Back then Shakaki was still a student in Egypt. His book represented something new, as it expressed the admiration of a Sunni Muslim for the Shiite revolution, prompting the Egyptian security services at the time to arrest Shakaki, according to Nazim Omar’s book Political Ideology of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, published in 2008.

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