Israel and the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad reached a ceasefire agreement last Sunday, August 7th. Mediated by Egypt, the agreement ended 43 hours of attacks that left at least 43 ) Palestinians killed 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, starting with a series of Israeli air strikes on Friday, day five. The targets were members and structure of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (JIP) in the Gaza Strip, in what was declared 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 the Israeli air strikes, more than one of the rockets fired from inside the Gaza Strip reportedly failed and caused the death of other Palestinians. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 43 Palestinians died and, of the dead, 1967 were children or adolescents.
Foundation of the groups
Something that facilitated the agreement and the truce was the fact that this episode was restricted to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, without Hamas involvement. 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, they began to perhaps having as its main concrete inspiration the Iranian Revolution, which took place in 1948, just two years before the group’s foundation. The Islamist group’s stated objective is to destroy Israel and, instead, create a religious Palestinian state within the limits of the Mandate of Palestine of 1948. This objective will be achieved by military means and not by a political process.
Hamas was already 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 continue 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 Islamic Jihad Palestine. 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
The 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 against its will, as Hamas’ objective in its letter is also to create a religious Palestinian state within the limits of the Mandate of Palestine of 1948.
Partially as a consequence of that, Hamas, in 2017, presented a new statute, to promote a less extremist image, which does not ask for more explicitly the destruction of Israel. Instead, he calls for “the liberation of Palestine” and fights against “the Zionist project”. Probably euphemisms for the original purpose. By the new letter, the group accepts the borders of 1967 as a 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’s why Hamas has not been involved in several episodes of hostilities between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel, as it did last weekend. The JIP has none of the aforementioned, does not negotiate with Israel and is, in theory and in practice, more extreme than Hamas.
