Israel and the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad reached a ceasefire agreement last Sunday, August 7th. Mediated by Egypt, the agreement ended 48 hours of attacks that left at least 43 Palestinians dead in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the usual exchanges of accusations about responsibility for the deaths, the weekend brought a question asked by some readers on social media. Is there a difference, and what would they be, between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas?
The events were called Operation Dawn in Israel, beginning with a series of Israeli air strikes on Friday the 5th. The targets were members and structure of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (JIP) in the Gaza Strip, in something declared as a “preemptive strike”. In this case, prevention against possible retaliation by the group for the arrest of Bassam al-Saadi, leader of the group, in the city of Jenin, in the West Bank. The first Israeli strike killed Tayseer Jabari, one of the group’s top commanders.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the acts a “declaration of war” and fired hundreds of rockets at Israel. Most of them were intercepted by Israeli defenses. In addition to Israeli air strikes, more than one of the rockets fired from inside the Gaza Strip reportedly failed and killed other Palestinians. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 43 Palestinians died and, of those killed, 16 were children or adolescents.
Foundation of groups
Something that facilitated the agreement and the truce was the fact that this episode was restricted to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, without the involvement of the Hamas. Both groups were formed from the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the early 20th century and main inspiration. JIP was founded in 1981 in Gaza by Palestinians who were members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. At least one of them even fled Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
If the founders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were initially inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps their main concrete inspiration was the Iranian Revolution, which took place in 1979, just two years before the group’s founding. The Islamist group’s stated objective is to destroy Israel and, instead, create a religious Palestinian state within the confines of the 1948 Palestine Mandate. This objective will be achieved through military means rather than a political process.
Hamas was founded in 1987, in the context of the First Intifada. Hamas is a direct branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time he was a kind of political and military arm of the Brotherhood which, in Gaza, had especially religious and social functions. Furthermore, Hamas emerged as an Islamist counterpoint to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat and linked to Palestinian nationalism. The rifts between Hamas and the secular Palestinian authorities persist to this day.
In other words, Hamas was founded in a context of popular uprising and this is the origin of the main difference between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas is a popular group, much larger and with a deep administrative and political structure, while the JIP, founded by a small nucleus of theologians and militants, is a small group with little capillarity in the society around it. This difference in the nature of the foundation of the groups also explains the main practical difference between the two.
Pragmatism and extremism
Hamas has ruled Gaza since it took power in 2007, and goes beyond its armed wing, with a political party and administrative and social bodies. Therefore, it has broader responsibilities and needs to negotiate with the Israeli authorities, even through alternative channels or through mediators. Of course, this negotiation is grudging, as Hamas’ objective in its charter is also to create a religious Palestinian state within the confines of the 1948 Mandate of Palestine.
Partly as a consequence of this, Hamas, in 2017, presented a new statute, to foster a less extremist image, which no longer explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel. Instead, he calls for “the liberation of Palestine” and fights against “the Zionist project”. Probably euphemisms for the original purpose. Under the new charter, the group accepts the 1967 borders as the basis for a state and has severed its institutional ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, declaring “independence”.
Today, Hamas has more pragmatic elements within the group, who advocate negotiations with Israel to progressively improve socio-economic conditions within the Gaza Strip. That is why Hamas has not been involved in several episodes of hostilities between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel, as it was last weekend. The JIP has none of the above, does not negotiate with Israel and is, in theory and in practice, more extreme than Hamas.
international board
This can be seen in the international community. Many countries condemn Hamas as a whole as a terrorist group, while others condemn only its armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades, as terrorists, recognizing the political party. In the case of Palestinian Islamic Jihad there is no such distinction when classified as a terrorist. And also with regard to the international community, there is another difference between the groups. JIP is not just “inspired” by the Iranian Revolution.
Iran and Hezbollah are the main funders and supporters of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Assad’s Syria also played an important role in supporting the group, but this has diminished with the ongoing civil war. More than funded, the JIP will act in accordance with Iranian interests and guidelines. In the aforementioned Syrian civil war, for example, the group fought alongside Iranian forces and Hezbollah. At the same time, Hamas was expelled from Syria for supporting the Syrian Sunni opposition.
The Sunni aspect is much more present in Hamas, in another difference between the groups. Hamas has an “alliance of convenience” with Iran, as both have a common enemy in Israel. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, despite being mostly Sunni, is aligned with the aforementioned Shia actors. In other words, understanding the differences between the groups also helps us to think about the current context of the Middle East, with the events in Gaza as a skirmish within the larger dispute between Iran and Israel.
#differences #Palestinian #Islamic #Jihad #Hamas