Special Information
Bulletin

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)
February 28, 2005

Profile of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, perpetrator of a suicide bombing attack
in Tel Aviv, February 25, 2005

Video cassette of the suicide bomber broadcast by Al-Jazeera. He strongly condemned the Palestinian Authority and issued a threat of more suicide bombing attacks.

On February 25, 2005, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) perpetrated a suicide bombing attack on the sea-front Herbert Samuel promenade in Tel Aviv, murdering four Israeli citizens and wounding 50. The attack was directed by PIJ headquarters in Damascus. The PIJ is a radical Islamic terrorist organization actively conspiring to destroy the State of Israel and to replace it with an extremist Islamic Palestinian state. During the ongoing violent Palestinian-Israeli confrontation the PIJ has been responsible for several deadly suicide bombing attacks, the most conspicuous of which was perpetrated at the Maxim Restaurant on October 4, 2003, in which 21 people were murdered and about 60 wounded. The PIJ is almost completely dependent on two countries: Syria, which permits its leadership, under the direction of Dr. Ramadan Shalah, to operate from its territory and from Lebanon, from where it directs its anti-Israeli terrorist activities in the Palestinian Authority-administered territories; and Iran, its most important patron, which provides it with massive financial support (in fact almost all of its budget) and which uses is (and Hezbollah) as a lever to escalate terrorism in the PA-administered territories. In the past (2003) the PIJ also tried to end the cease fire (hudna) achieved by Israel and the Palestinians, and during the 1990s it tried to sabotage the Oslo peace process. The recent attack in Tel Aviv challenges Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority and poses obstacles for the current calm and the continued Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

The suicide bombing attack on the Herbert Samuel promenade in Tel Aviv
At 11 o’clock at night on February 25, 2005 a Palestinian terrorist perpetrated a suicide bombing attack at the Stage Club on the Herbert Samuel promenade in Tel Aviv. As a result of the explosion five Israeli civilians were murdered and close to 50 were wounded. The attack was carried out by the PIJ infrastructure in Samaria in the northern West Bank (an area in which the PIJ is well entrenched) and directed by the organization’s headquarters in Damascus.
The organization’s terrorist-operative wing, known as the Jerusalem Battalions, claimed responsibility for the attack by means of a video cassette broadcast by Al-Jazeera TV (February 26, 2005), sent to them by the PIJ leadership (based in Damascus). On the cassette, ‘Abdallah Sa’id Badran announces his decision to perpetrate a suicide bombing attack and threatens that in the future there will be thousands more suicide bombers (istishhadiin). He attacked the Palestinian Authority, which, he said, was “trading in the blood of martyrs” and following in the footsteps of the United States. He threatened that its fate would be the same as the army of General Lahad in south Lebanon.
The suicide bomber was ‘Abdallah Sa’id Badran, a student from Dir al-Ghussun, a village near Tulkarm. His family, one of the largest in the village, is poor. He was known as being religious and had been praying regularly in the mosque for years. He studied the Arabic language at the Tulkarm branch of the Open University and was considered a poor student.
The PIJ has a student wing (al-jama’ah al-islamiyyah) which indoctrinates the student population with its suicide bombing and “martyrdom” culture, preparing the ground to recruit them (as was the case with Badran) for terrorist attacks. The suicide bombing attack on the Tel Aviv promenade triggered a PIJ rally at Hebron University, a well-known source of anti-Israeli incitement, during which masked terrorists came out in force. Carrying plastic weapons and models of artillery shells, they called for the jihad and the insurgence against Israel to continue.

A picture of the suicide bomber ‘Abdallah Sa’id Badran as it appeared on Hamas’ Internet site (www.palestine-info.net), which referred to him as “the heroic shaheed ‘Abdallah Badran.” The suicide bombing attack he perpetrated was called al-amaliyyah al-istishhadiyyah, in Hamas terminology “the death of a martyr for the sake of Allah.” Glorification of the terrorist and his attack are in direct opposition to Palestinian Authority policy and the sentiments of the majority of the Palestinian population.

The recent attack in Tel Aviv challenges Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority and poses obstacles for the current calm and the continued Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. . It questions the validity of the agreements Abu Mazen reached with the various Palestinian terrorist organizations regarding the truce and his ability to keep the agreements reached by the Sharm el-Sheikh Conference. Abu Mazen and the new Palestinian government vigorously condemned the attack and made the exceptional move of calling its perpetrators “terrorists” (mukharibin, a term often used by Israel). He even blamed “a third party interested in delaying and destroying the peace process” (AFP, February 26, 2005). The expression “third party” is a thinly veiled reference to Syria and the terrorist organizations operating from its territory and serving it and Iran as a means of sabotaging the truce and the communication between Israel and the Palestinians.
The following appendix is a profile of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The scene of the suicide bombing attack as it appeared on Hamas’ Internet site (www.palestine-info.net)

 

Appendix


The Palestinian Islamic Jihad


The emblem of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which operates under Syrian aegis and is heavily sponsored by Iran. In the center, on a background of the Dome of the Rock, the map of greater Palestine is shown flanked by assault rifles. Above it and between the rifles appears the inscription “Allah huAkbar” [“Allah is Great,” the famous Islamic battle cry and usually the last words of a suicide bomber]. It expresses the organization’s radical Islamic religious message, which seeks to destroy the State of Israel (referred to as “the full liberation of the Palestinian lands”) by means of an armed and uncompromising jihad (holy war) and to establish a religious Islamic Palestinian state in its place.

The Jerusalem Battalions’ emblem: inspired by Hezbollah

Emblem of Hezbollah

Emblem of the Jerusalem Battalions


Overview
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is a relatively small, radical, Islamic-oriented terrorist organization1 whose ideology is a combination of religious Islamic fanaticism and extremist nationalism. It views terrorist attacks against Israel as the only means for achieving its goals, the first of which are the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a religious Islamic Palestinian state in the area they refer to as “Filisteen” (by which they mean the Land of Israel). During the ongoing violent Palestinian-Israeli confrontation PIJ has perpetrated a series of murderous suicide bombing attacks, the most prominent of which was at the Maxim Restaurant in October 2003.

1. The PIJ calls itself a “movement.” However, as opposed to Hamas, it does not enjoy much support from the Palestinian population and is essentially an organization rather than a widely-based popular movement.

Both the United States and the European Union have designated the PIJ as a terrorist organization. However, as a rule, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has avoided confrontations with the PIJ and Hamas, thus allowing both movements, which view themselves as the PA’s eventual replacement, to increase their strength and to consolidate their positions with the indigenous Palestinian population.
The PIJ is almost completely dependent on two countries: Syria, which permits its leadership, under the direction of Dr. Ramadan Shalah, to operate from its territory and from Lebanon, from where it directs its anti-Israeli terrorist activities in the Palestinian Authority-administered territories; and Iran, its most important patron, which provides it with massive financial support (in fact almost all of its budget) and which uses it (and Hezbollah) as a lever to escalate terrorism in the PA-administered territories while hiding its own involvement.

Milestones in PIJ history and examples of its ideology
Palestinian religious Islamic fanaticism, whose most prominent representatives are the PIJ and Hamas, is part of the worldwide trend toward a religious Islamic resurgence. It has been developing in the Middle East since the early nineteen seventies, and one of its crowning achievements was the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. The resurgence’s standard bearers are militant Islamic groups composed mainly of young, educated individuals whose frustration with and alienation from the social, cultural and political life in the Middle East (and worldwide, wherever Moslems are found) motivated them to adopt religious Islamic fanaticism. That was done as part of their protest and struggle for change. They aimed at solving the identity crisis born of the clash between traditional Islamic values and the secular, modern Western culture to which they were exposed and which they found confusing. However, while the religious Islamic fanatics in the Arab countries initially distanced themselves from the armed conflict with Israel, postponing it to an indefinite time in the future, the religious Islamic radicalism which developed in what are now the PA-administered territories stressed the need for an immediate armed Jihad to “liberate Palestine” and eradicate the “Zionist entity.”2 That point was one of the main controversies between the PIJ and the Moslem Brotherhood during the PIJ’s early stages.3

2. Meir Hatina, Palestinian Radicals: The Islamic Jihad Movement, Tel Aviv University/The Moshe Dayan Center, 1994, pp. 9-12.
3. According to a study of the PIJ found in the possession of the PA Internal Security Forces in Bethlehem during Operation Defensive Shield. Henceforth: PIJ study .
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad began with a small group of Palestinian students studying at Zagazig University (in the north of Egypt) during the 1970s. The university was a stronghold of religious Islamic fundamentalism and the group was headed by Fat’hi Abd al-Aziz al-Shkaki (Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki), who was studying medicine. Dr. Ramadan Shalah, the PIJ’s current secretary, was also one of the organization’s founders. The founding members had originally belonged to the Moslem Brotherhood but were frustrated by its lack of real action. They wanted to copy the Jihad movements which were flourishing in Egypt at the time and create a Palestinian Islamic organization which would combine radical Islamic activism with uncompromising Palestinian nationalism. It was to be an alternative to the secular nationalism of the Fatah, the main faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The radical Islamic organizations in the PA-administered territories use terrorism (which they describe as armed jihad) to achieve their ends. They reached ideological and organizational maturity at the end of the 1970s--beginning of the 1980s, when Shkaki and his comrades returned to the Gaza Strip. There they began to accommodate the revolutionary ideas they had absorbed while in Egypt to the Palestinian arena, at the same time separating themselves from the ideology and organizational framework of the Moslem Brotherhood. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was an important factor in shaping the final form of the organization during 1980-1981. It was at that time that the Gaza Strip branch of the Islamic Jihad appeared, although it had other names, the most well-known being the Islamic Vanguard. It had two founders: Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki and sheikh Abd al-Aziz ‘Odeh, a religious Islamic preacher from the refugee camp at Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, the scion of a Palestinian family which had fled from the area around Beersheba in 1948.
After Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki and his comrades returned to what were then known as the “occupied territories,” i.e., the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they exploited political and educational activities to set up a secret infrastructure of activists, at the same time establishing armed terrorist cells. The universities and mosques in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip served as two important sources of potential supporters for the organization in its early stages.
According to an internal PIJ study, the organization formulated an ideology which sought the immediate “liberation” of all Palestine through an armed jihad which would be directed against “Jewish existence in Palestine” and would lead to the extinction of “the Zionist entity.” The jihad, according to the PIJ, was an obligation that was to be fulfilled immediately and not postponed until after the establishment of a religious “Islamic state.” According to the organization’s ideology, armed struggle was a first and necessary step in the process of rehabilitating the entire nation of Islam through the return to the original religious Islamic values.4 The PIJ, inspired by Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki, expressed its enthusiastic support for the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the organization’s pro-Iranian orientation became its trademark. During that time there was an open breach between the PIJ and the Moslem Brotherhood because the Brotherhood opposed the PIJ’s support for the Iranian revolution and viewed it as a “deviation from the true path.”

4. From an Arabic study entitled The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, Its Growth and Methods, 2001, pp. 7, 14, found during Operation Defensive Shield (April 2002) (one of many items published by the PIJ;. Henceforth: PIJ study). It is most probably an internal PIJ document, and well researched and written according to academic standards.
The PIJ study found in the possession of the PA Internal Security Forces in Bethlehem notes that the organization participated in creating the atmosphere which led to the outbreak of the first intifada, which began in December 1987, and that its members were among the first to take part in it. According to the study, the PIJ was working to escalate the confrontation with Israel and to turn it into an armed conflict. In addition, the expulsion of Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki by Israel to Lebanon in 1988 led to the a new stage in the organization’s history because it enabled its members to secure closer relations with “the main supporting countries of the Arabic and Islamic world” [i.e., Syria and Iran]. At the time, continues the study, the organization also strengthened its ties with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
According to the study, after the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993, “when the flames of the [first] intifada began to die down,” the organization initiated a series of military actions against Israel while adopting a plan of “military suicide attacks” (‘amaliyyat ‘askariyyah istishhadiyyah) to sabotage the nascent Oslo process. The most important action at that time, says the study, was the suicide bombing attack at Beit Lid, near Netanya, a city in the central part of Israel, in which two PIJ “fighters” blew themselves up at a crowded bus stop, killing 22 Israeli soldiers (January 22, 1995).
The PIJ’s study notes that on October 26, 1995, Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki, then the leader of the organization, was killed in Malta by “Mossad agents” while he was on his way from Libya to his permanent residence in Damascus. His appointed successor was Dr. Ramadan ‘Abdallah Shalah who was, as previously noted (Section 4, above), one of the organization’s founding members. The first military [sic] action of the second intifada, states the study, was carried out near the Mahane Yehuda market in the heart of Jerusalem (On November 11, 2000, a car bomb exploded in the Mahane Yehuda market, killing two individuals. It was the first PIJ action carried out within Israeli borders during the current conflict.). According to the study, the PIJ has carried out a long series of suicide bombings as well as “ordinary military attacks” against Israel in order to bring about military escalation leading to the collapse of the peace process.5

5. PIJ study, pp. 12-13.
Hamas, like the PIJ, considers recruiting members from the university student bodies in the PA-administered territories to their respective organizations (al-jamaa’ al-islamiyyat) extremely important. Their student organizations instill members with the culture of martyrdom for the sake of Allah and of suicide bombing, and recruit the students for perpetrating suicide bombing attacks.

The PIJ’s terrorist-operational activity

Despite its small size, the organization has perpetrated a large number of terrorist attacks with devastating results. Since the current conflict began (late Sep 2000) the PIJ’s Jerusalem Battalions have perpetrated approximately 1,000 attacks against Israel6 in which about 150 Israelis have been killed and approximately 950 wounded, the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians.

6. Including the launching of mortars and rockets.

The organization has carried out a long series of suicide bombing attacks against Israel using both male and female terrorists, the most conspicuous of which was at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, in which 21 were killed and 60 wounded, as noted. Figuring prominently among the targets the PIJ chooses are public transportation (usually buses) and places of business and entertainment (restaurants, malls and coffee houses) which are crowded with civilians.
Among the organization’s more vicious suicide bombing attacks the following are worth mentioning:
  Jerusalem , November 2, 2000: a car bomb exploded in the Mahane Yehuda market, killing 2.
  Hadera (a city to the south of Haifa), May 25, 2001: two terrorists carrying explosives blew themselves up in a car next to a bus, wounding 66.
  Binyamina (south of Haifa), July 16, 2001: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated at a bus stop near the train station, killing 2 and wounding 10.
  Kiriyat Motzkin (a city bordering Haifa), August 12, 2001: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated at the Wall Street Restaurant, wounding 16.
  Beit Lid (near Netanya), September 9, 2001: a car bomb exploded, wounding 11.
  Hadera, October 28, 2001: two terrorists rode through the center of the city shooting at passersby,
killing 4 and wounding 42.
  On a road near the entrance to an army base situated to the east of Hadera, November 29, 2001: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated on a bus, killing 3 and wounding 9.
  Jerusalem , at the entrance to the Mamilla Hilton, December 5, 2001: an armed attack was perpetrated which left 11 wounded.
  A main intersection near Haifa, December 9, 2001: an attempted suicide bombing attack was perpetrated, leaving 24 wounded.
  The old central bus station in Tel Aviv, January 25, 2002: a double suicide bombing attack was perpetrated in which the PIJ and Fatah collaborated, wounding 23.
  Afula (a city to the south of Haifa), March 5, 2002: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated, killing 1 and wounding 15.
  On a road through Wadi Ara (a valley to the east of Hadera, populated almost entirely by Israeli Arabs), March 20, 2002: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated on a bus, killing 7 and wounding 30.
  The main intersection near Kibbutz Yagur, near Haifa, April 10, 2002: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated on a bus, killing 8 and wounding 15.
  The Megiddo junction west of Afula, June 5, 2002: a car bomb driven by a terrorist who positioned himself close to the bus’ gas tank exploded, killing 17 and wounding 50.
  The Umm el-Fahem intersection in Wadi Ara, September 18, 2002: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated against Israeli police, killing 1 and wounding 2.
  The Karkur intersection in the Wadi Ara area, October 21, 2002: a car bomb driven by two terrorists exploded next to a bus, killing 14 and wounding 50.
  “The synagogue goers path,” a site in Hebron, November 15, 2002: an ambush carried out by three terrorists, killing 12 and wounding 16, including a high-ranking Israeli army officer.
  Netanya, March 30, 2003: a suicide bombing attack was perpetrated at the London Café, wounding 54.
  Afula, May 19, 2003: a female suicide bomber blew herself up at the entrance to the mall, killing 3 and wounding 54.
  Kefar Yavetz, a village in the central part Israel, July 7, 2003: a terrorist forced his way into a house and blew himself up, killing 1 and wounding 6.
  Haifa , the Maxim restaurant, October 4, 2003: a female suicide bomber blew herself up inside the restaurant, killing 21 and wounding 60.
  The Stage Club on the Herbert Samuel promenade near the beach in Tel Aviv, February 25, 2005: a suicide bomber blew himself up next to people waiting in line to enter the club killing 5 and approximately 50.

Hannadi Taysir ‘Abd al-Malik Jirdath , the females suicide bomber who blew herself up in the Maxim Restaurant before the attack. Reading from a prepared speech she said:
“With the strength and heroism of Allah, I decided to become the sixth female suicide bomber to turn her body into shrapnel which will penetrate the heard of every Zionist settler in my country…
(Al-Arabia TV, October 5, 2003)


The PIJ’s terrorist infrastructure in Samaria
The PIJ has operational infrastructures in the large cities of the PA-territories. The most prominent ones are in Samaria, particularly in Jenin (known as “suicide bombers’ capital”). An examination of the locations of PIJ suicide bombing attacks against Israel indicates a substantial increase in the north and in the region around Wadi Ara; the attacks were perpetrated by terrorists who came from the area around Jenin.
During the former temporary cessation of hostilities (hudna), which the Palestinian terrorist organizations never completely adhered to, the PIJ exploited the interval to perform massive repairs to its operational infrastructure in Samaria. At the same time, its operatives in Jenin and Samaria worked overtime to carry out terrorist attacks (most of them frustrated by the Israeli security forces), disregarding the hudna completely.

Syrian aid for the PIJ
During the current intifada, which began in late September, 2000, Iran and Syria have relentlessly worked to prevent a relaxation of hostilities originating in the PA-administered territories and to increase terrorist activity against Israel. Fearing Israeli reprisals and international condemnation, they do not act directly but rather through the use of proxies, i.e., the Palestinian organizations operating under their sponsorship, principally the PIJ, Hamas and Ahmad Jabril’s Palestinian Front. Syria permits those organizations (which collaborate with one another) to maintain their military, political and propaganda infrastructures on its territory and in Lebanon.
The aforementioned infrastructures include headquarters, offices, military equipment and supplies and training camps, such as Jabril’s Palestinian Front’s base at Ein Sahib, which was attacked by the Israeli Air Force on October 5, 2003. Syria’s claim that the Palestinian organizations keep only “information offices” on its territory is therefore a complete fabrication.
The organization headquarters in Damascus(sponsored by Syria and Lebanon) direct the terrorists in the PA-administered territories in their attacks against Israel. That direction includes: the coordination necessary to carry out a terrorist attack; suggesting terrorist-operational ideas and initiating activities by means of operatives first invited to Syria; directions for escalating lethal suicide attacks; or, when it serves Syrian and Iranian interests, instructions for a temporary lessening of terrorist activities.
Dr. Ramadan ‘Abdallah Muhammad Shalah, the PIJ leader, often visits Syria and operates under the protection of the Syrian regime. From his headquarters in Damascus he and his aides maintain constant contact with PIJ operatives in the PA-administered territories and direct their activities.
PIJ headquarters is in constant contact with terrorist operatives in the PA-administered territories, a fact attested to by arrested PIJ members interrogated by Israeli security forces. Thus, for instance, Ali al-Sa’di (known as “al-Saffuri”) and Thabet Mardawi, two senior terrorists from the Jenin region arrested during Operation Defensive Shield, admitted under interrogation that they regularly communicated with Dr. Ramadan Shalah and his aides, members of PIJ headquarters. They both stated that they were frequently communicated with PIJ headquarters in Damascus to discuss a number of issues, such as:
  Clarifying the political positions taken by the organization’s leadership in Damascus (regarding its policy of carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel).
  Informing headquarters of their responsibility for terrorist attacks carried out by members of the organization (reports from the PA-administered territories are the basis for the public announcements made in Damascus).
  Requests for money.
  Undergoing relevant training needed for the preparation of weapons and explosive devices.

Lebanon as one of the PIJ’s operational backup countries
The PIJ has run an operational infrastructure in Lebanon ever since Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki, the organization’s founder, was expelled there from Israeli territory. The organization is allowed to exploit the infrastructure as part of Iranian policy in support of terrorism in close cooperation with Hezbollah and with Syria’s approval, without which it could not operate on Lebanese soil.
Since Dr. Fat’hi Shkaki was expelled to Lebanon in 1988, the organization has carried out 20 terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, all of them in cooperation with Hezbollah. In 1999, however, the organization abandoned Lebanon as its main launching site for attacks against Israel. It now focuses on promoting operational activities “inside” [the PA-administrated territories and Israel], and the resources previously allocated to Lebanon have been diverted to it. Evidence for that is the aid given by Hezbollah to the training in Lebanon of PIJ operatives from the PA-administered territories. It should be noted that the operatives who carried out the terrorist attack against Kibbutz Matzuba, close to the Lebanese border, on March 12, 2002, which resulted in the death of 6 Israelis, were PIJ members working for Hezbollah who had infiltrated the Israeli-Lebanese border into Israel.

The funeral of PIJ operatives killed in southern Lebanon by IDF forces, November, 1996

Iranian aid for the PIJ

“The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is one of the many fruits on our leader Khomeini’s tree”

(Dr. Ramadan Shalah, IRNA [ Iranian Republic News Agency], May 22, 2002). “The Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 is a victory for the model the PIJ has been striving to attain since the middle of the 1970s…” (PIJ study, p. 19).
Of all the Palestinian terrorist organizations, the PIJ is the one with the closest ties to Iran and which receives more Iranian aid, especially financial, than any other. For Iran (and for other countries which support international terror), money is one of the most important tools for operating terrorist infrastructures, in this case in the PA-administered territories as well as for encouraging the activities of various Palestinian terrorist organizations. According both to captured PA documents and the statements of terrorists arrested and interrogated, the terrorist organizations operating with Iranian support, that is, the PIJ, Hamas and Hezbollah, regularly receive large sums of money from Iran.
With that it mind, it should be noted that Iran is practically the PIJ’s only source of funding. The organization’s annual budget has been estimated at several million dollars, a large percentage of which is earmarked for funding terrorist attacks carried out by its operatives against Israel and maintaining its terrorist apparatus: offices, salaries, weapons and explosives, as well as financial aid to the families of casualties and detainees. In July, 2003, the Palestinian security forces claimed that they had confiscated $3 million in cash which Iran had transferred to the PIJ (a considerable sum of money even according to the PIJ’s criteria).
In Israeli assessment, only an extremely small amount of the organization’s budget is allotted to funding its civilian infrastructure (much smaller than the amounts allotted by Hamas for the same purpose). The PIJ’s civilian infrastructure includes a number of societies in the West Bank (al-Ihsan, al-Naqa’ for women and the Islamic youth club in Bethlehem) and in the Gaza Strip (seven branches of al-Ihsan). The societies operate in the fields of health, welfare and religious Islamic education.

All of the above provide a clear illustration of how, by means of a relatively “insignificant” investment, Iran bought itself power over a small, “quality” terrorist organization and takes advantage of it to influence its terrorist-operative members to continue their attacks against Israel inside and outside of the PA-administered territories. The organization’s suicide bombing attacks are therefore a clear indication of the political success of Iranian support of terror, all of it done without leaving any clear Iranian “fingerprints.”

Dr. Ramadan Shalah –portrait of the current leader of the PIJ
Ramadan Abdallah Muhammad Shalah was born in 1958 in the Saja’iyyah neighborhood of the Gaza Strip, one of many siblings. As a high school student he joined the Moslem Brotherhood, which also funded his tuition at Zagazig University in Egypt, considered a stronghold of rising religious Islamic fundamentalism during the 1970s. As a student (1977-1981), he met a group of other Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip, including Fat’hi Shkaki, who wanted to imitate the militant jihad movements flourishing in Egypt at that time. Ramadan Shalah became one of the founders of the PIJ and edited its internal political journal.
When he returned to the Gaza Strip on 1981 he was hired to lecture in the Economics Department of Gaza’s Islamic University and became a sought-after speaker. In 1985 he continued his studies in England and was awarded a PhD in economics from Durham University. He then moved to the United States and lectured in international relations at Tampa University in Florida. He was chosen as the PIJ’s secretary general in late 1995 after Dr. Shkaki died in Malta.

Dr. Ramadan Abdallah Muhammad Shalah in a telephone interview given to al-Jazeera on March 30, 2003. During the interview he claimed PIJ responsibility for the suicide bombing attack carried out by Rami Jamil Ghanem of the PIJ Jerusalem Squads [the PIJ’s operational wing] at the London Café in Netanya, March 30, 2003, in which 30 Israelis were injured. The PIJ announcement linked the suicide bombing attack, which took place during the American military engagement in Iraq, to that carried out at Najaf against the American army currently stationed there (October, 2003). The PIJ represents an ideology also hostile to the United States and the values it stands for.
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