Belligerent aims of Israel’s local Jihadis

Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Islamist Writings on Resistance and Religion

Erik Skare (Ed) I. B. Tauris £80

FORTY YEARS ago, a group of students formed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza. It was inspired by the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo by an Islamist.

In the absence of any desire by the Muslim Brotherhood to embark on a military struggle, PIJ carried out its first attack in 1984 — years before Hamas came into existence. Its raison d’etre was provided by its leader, Fathi al-Shiqaqi who was killed by Mossad agents in Malta in October 1995. This book is a collection of PIJ writings, mainly al-Shiqaqi’s, published for the first time in English. Its editor — the academic — Erik Skare, has produced excellent footnotes and explanations.

Al-Shiqaqi spoke perfect English; was well-read, from Shakespeare to Marx, and was the publisher of the PIJ journal, Islamic Vanguard, in London in 1982. However, his understanding of the Jews and their history was primitive and uninformed.

In July 1980, al-Shiqaqi wrote that Jews created “the usury system” — an echo of a classic racist taunt in Christian Europe.

PIJ views Jews as the historical enemies of Islam — a corrupting, lying and pernicious tribe. In a June 1989 pamphlet, al-Shiqaqi noted that Jews had risen up during the time of the Prophet Mohammed and been vanquished — yet, 14 centuries later, God had inexplicably returned them to Palestine.

But, al-Shiqaqi wrote,“we shall wake up from our sleep... and irrevocably dispose of them.” For PIJ, there is no room for compromise and they hold in contempt Palestinians who contemplate a two-state solution. PIJ claims that Palestine was originally the domain of

Arab Canaanites and that the Palestinians are descended from the biblical Jebusites. Israelis are perceived as the embodiment of a foreign intellectual invasion of the Muslim world, which was signposted by the Catholic reconquista of Spain and Napoleon’s landing in Egypt in 1798.

In al-Shiqaqi’s eyes, Israel constitutes a danger to the entire Muslim world “from Tangiers to Jakarta, from Istanbul to Lagos”.

In PIJ’s view, suicide bombers kill themselves for God, and martyrdom exemplifies a “pure moral behaviour”.

Remarkably, PIJ looks to Shi’ite Iran for guidance even though its people are Sunni Muslims. But Al-Shiqaqi was a great admirer of Khomeini, who depicted Islam in “its revolutionary holistic sense”.

Erik Skare’s important book provides an insight into the mind-set of Palestinian Islamists and their intellectual scaffolding. It will not appeal to the point scorers and the breast beaters of the megaphone war as well as those who believe that Palestinian Islamists — as opposed to Palestinian nationalists — can be engaged in a rational dialogue in the hope of eventual peace and reconciliation.

As a PIJ pamphlet published in Beirut in 1989 put it: “our task is to drive the Zionist enemy from our land, inch by inch, village by village, city by city.”

In alShiqaqi’s eyes, Israel constitutes a danger to the entire Muslim world