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.
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.
Concerning Iran and the PIJ, Mohammad Hejazi, an expert on Islamist movements, told Al-Monitor that there are two trends within the PIJ. The first considers that its relationship with Iran is ideological and goes as far as accepting the principle of Shiism. This trend, however, is weak within the movement. There is another strong trend that converges with Iranian policy in the face of Israel. This one supports Hezbollah and accepts Iran’s weapons and financial support in the equation of the Iranian-Israeli conflict. It also accepts that a base of Iranian missiles be established in the Gaza Strip, and believes that the organizational and military structure of the PIJ is similar to that of Hezbollah, and that there is no separation between the PIJ’s military and political wings.
Daoud Shihab, the media spokesman for the PIJ, does not hide that Iran is the movement’s main supporter. While noting that there are other parties [who support the PIJ], he said, "All of the weapons in Gaza are provided by Iran, be they weapons intended for the Hamas movement or for the PIJ. Perhaps Hamas even has more Iranian weapons than us; and everyone knows that Iran is financing us.” Shihab said that “the PIJ is a resistance movement, and while there are many parties in the Arab and Muslim world offering support for the resistance, the largest share of this financial and military support is coming from Iran.”
