Who’s leading whom in the Gaza Strip? Does Hamas lord over the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a militant movement supported by Iran, or is it the other way around? Over the past few months, Israeli security forces have noted the growing influence of the Islamic Jihad on Hamas. Seeking to avoid problems with Iran, the Hamas leadership feels it has little choice but to follow the Islamic Jihad’s dictates in their actions when dealing with Israel and Egypt.
This was exacerbated following the appointment of Ziyad al-Nakhalah as secretary-general of the Islamic Jihad in September 2018. Nakhalah replaces Abdullah Ramadan Shalah, who has been in a coma ever since he suffered a stroke in April 2018.
Born in Khan Yunis, Nakhalah spent 14 years in Israeli prisons until he was released in the 1985 prisoner exchange called the “Jibril deal.” He was later expelled to Lebanon, where he was brought into the Islamic Jihad leadership by the movement’s founder, Fathi al-Shaqaqi. Shaqaqi was killed in Malta in 1995 in an attack attributed by foreign news sources to the Mossad. The hit was allegedly in retaliation for a terrorist attack at the Beit Lid intersection in January 1995 in which 21 soldiers and a civilian were killed. Ramadan Shalah was lecturing in the United States at the time of the assassination, but he was called back to take over as the movement’s secretary-general. He then appointed Nakhalah as his deputy.
Throughout all of these years, Ramadan Shalah had been loyal to Iran, which funded PIJ to the tune of $70 million per year, drawn from the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Under him, Islamic Jihad found itself trapped between a desire to appease Iran, which, in turn, wanted a significant foothold in Gaza, and its tenuous relationship with Hamas, which actually controlled the Gaza Strip. Given these conflicting interests, Ramadan Shalah was extremely cautious during his tenure. He recognized the inherent limitation facing a small organization with about 1,000 armed fighters and always sought to find a balance between the interests of Islamic Jihad and Iran in Gaza and the reality on the ground, where Hamas maintained absolute control and enjoyed full operational ability.
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