Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Ex USF professor & indicted Al Arian co defendant Ramadan Shallah announces Islamic Jihad will attack Tel Aviv
Ex USF professor & indicted Al Arian co defendant Ramadan Shallah announces Islamic Jihad will attack Tel Aviv
June 25, 2005
| Islamic Jihad Challenges Israel Amid Growing Anarchy
Sunday, June 26, 2005 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=84555 Group Uses Violence `To Liberate Palestine' By MICHAEL FECHTER It remains "the total liberation of Palestine," the group's secretary general told Al-Hayat, an Arabic-language daily in London. That means all the land that constitutes Israel, not just the additional territory Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. Shallah's remarks came two days after Islamic Jihad members crashed a sport utility vehicle loaded with explosives into an Israeli bus. Fourteen Israelis and the two bombers died; 45 people were injured. It was the Islamic Jihad's 16th attack of 2002. In all, 72 people have died - including 18 attackers - and 323 have been wounded. "All in the Zionist entity are targeted, except children," Shallah said. "For us, the whole entity is an entity of war that has raped our land."
A Group Of Intellectuals Shallah is no street fighter; indeed, he may never have fired a weapon in the uprising. He was, however, accused along with Sami Al- Arian and six others on Thursday of supporting, financing and relaying messages for a violent terrorist organization, the Islamic Jihad. Shallah earned a doctorate in economics and did academic research before replacing Fathi Shikaki, the Islamic Jihad's founder, who was slain in 1995. Shikaki was a physician. Nearly all the group's founders have held advanced degrees. The Islamic Jihad was created in 1979 by young intellectuals studying at universities in Cairo. They were the first generation born and raised after Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and they faced a bleak future. Egypt and other Arab governments offered a failed history of military confrontation with Israel. An influential religious society known as the Muslim Brotherhood said any revolutionary action would have to await an educational and spiritual awakening of the masses. But the Palestinian students, led by the charismatic Shikaki, refused to wait. They followed the lead of Iranian students who rose up to depose the Shah of Iran in 1979 and install a government run by religious law. Iran today remains the primary financial supporter of the Islamic Jihad.
Focus On Violence The Islamic Jihad claims it sparked the original Palestinian uprising in 1987 through a series of guerrilla attacks. But it never developed a mass following as did Hamas, its sometime-rival terrorist group. The Islamic Jihad focuses on violent attacks and doesn't sponsor, as Hamas does, a social service network of schools, mosques, clinics and sports clubs. It is far smaller and more secretive than Hamas, boasting a membership in the hundreds compared with tens of thousands for Hamas. An internal manifesto, discovered by federal agents searching the World and Islam Studies Enterprise office in Tampa in 1995, spells out the Islamic Jihad's singular focus on violence. The group, according to an FBI translation, believes "jihad is the solution to liberate Palestine and topple the infidel regimes." Among the principles, the document says, is "the rejection of any peaceful solution for the Palestinian cause, and the affirmation of the jihad solution and the martyrdom style as the only choices for liberation." --------------------------------------------------------- http://www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/aip/fall01/bibs01/msg00011.html MIM: For more on the PIJ See: |
10. Muslim World Daily News Briefs, Vol. 1 No. 13, ", October 28, 1996
http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199610/19961028.1.html.
This is a daily Islamic news source that is pro-Palestinian. Each issue
briefly describes events from all over the Middle East. According to this
source, PIJ leader Dr. Ramadan Abdallah Shalah vowed to avenge the
assassination of his predecessor, Dr. Fathi Shaqaqi. This article, which
was written a year after Shaqaqi's death, quotes Shalah as saying, "We will
avenge Shaqaqi's spilled blood and make the lives of the enemy's leaders and
their allies a hell of explosions and fire throughout our plundered land . .
. Armed battle is a strategic option as well as a duty and our movement has
decided to pursue a jihad. We oppose the establishment of a false peace.
We are the enemies of the US-Zionist peace, and our enemy understands only
the language of force." This speech was given at a meeting at the Yarmuk
refugee camp near Damascus for the first anniversary of Shaqaqi's death.
Representatives from the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Hezbollah, and
diplomats from Muslim countries attended the meeting.
11. "Palestinian Islamic Jihad"
http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=28.
This Israeli source describes the history, leadership, and activity of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The PIJ was founded by three men: Fathi
Shaqaqi, 'Abd al-'Aziz 'Odah, and Bashir
Musa. This Sunni group was unique in that it praised the Iranian Revolution
of 1979 despite it being a Shiite movement. This belief helped to cause the
organization to be expelled from Egypt in 1981 soon after the assassination
of Sadat. The PIJ claimed the unity of the Islamic world was not a
precondition for the liberation of Palestine; rather the liberation of
Palestine was the key to the unification of the Arab and Islamic world.
Founder and leader Fathi Shaqaqi was born in the Gaza Strip in 1951. He
received a B.A. in mathematics from Bin-Zeit University and studied medicine
at Zaqaziq University in Egypt. He
was a very intellectual and charismatic leader. Shaqaqi became active in
the Muslim Brotherhood, but left the organization because of ideological
disputes in 1974. Soon after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Shaqaqi wrote
a pamphlet entitled "Khomeini: The Islamic Solution and the Alternative".
This pamphlet glorified Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution and praised
Khomeini's position in regards to the unification of the two branches of
Islam. Soon, this pamphlet was banned from Egypt, and Shaqaqi was arrested
for three months. Unknown assailants killed Shaqaqi in October of 1995 in
Malta. After his assassination, he was succeeded by his close friend Dr.
Ramadan 'Abdallah Shalah. Shalah was born in the Saja'iyah refugee camp in
Gaza and was one of the PIJ's first militants. He wrote his doctorate
thesis on Islamic economics at the University of Durham in Britain and
taught at South Florida University in Tampa, Florida. He was once the
director of the World and Islamic Studies Enterprise think-tank. He left
Florida for Damascus in 1996. The PIJ has offices located in Beirut,
Damascus, Tehran, and Khartoum. The group has heavy influence in the
Islamic University.
12. Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000. United States Department of State,
April 2001
This book offers a brief summary of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The PIJ originated in the Gaza Strip in the 1970s. From it's beginning, the
group was committed to the creation of a Palestinian state and the
destruction of Israel through holy war. Since the United States is seen as
a friend of Israel, the U.S. is viewed as the PIJ's enemy. The PIJ also
opposes moderate Arab governments, which are seen as "Westernized". In late
2000, the PIJ conducted at least three attacks on Israel. The PIJ is
primarily located in Israel and the occupied territories, Jordan, and
Lebanon. Its headquarters are in Damascus, Syria. The organization is
financially backed by Iran and receives limited logistic assistance from
Syria.
13. Pipes, Daniel. "The World is Political! The Islamic Revival of the
Seventies," Orbis, (Fall 1983), pp. 24-36.
This is an interesting and intriguing article that examines the roots of the
Islamic revival of the 1970s. The article goes on to mention that one of
the creations of this Islamic revival was the PIJ. The article cites that
the main reason for this renewed popularity in Islam was because it offered
people, especially young males, an alternative to the status quo, which
could possibly lead to a new lease on life. It uses the PIJ as one of its
examples and explains that PIJ membership consisted, in the past, of many
born-again Muslims. The article also shows how this revival in Islam
translated into an urgent call for action, especially in the West Bank and
Gaza. Thus, the revival of Islam also turned into a wave of political Islam
(Islamic fundamentalism), which advocated Islamic resistance. This notion
was also very popular in the West Bank and Gaza as groups, like the PIJ,
capitalized on this renewed consciousness. All in all, this article offered
a good analysis and overview behind the Islamic revival of the 1970s and its
influence.
15. "USA: Middle East Overview Patterns of Global Terrorism - 2000", May
5, 2001 http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010502/2001050229.html.
This article describes Middle Eastern terrorist groups such as Hezbollah,
Hamas, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
from an American perspective. The PIJ, along with Hamas, heavily increased
attacks in late 2000 in protest to the peace process. This ended a period
of more than two years without a successful large-scale terrorist operation.
A PIJ operative detonated an explosive device near a Jewish settlement in
Gaza killing himself and injuring an Israeli soldier. This was timed to
mark the anniversary of the death of PIJ founder Fathi Shaqaqi. Violence
increased, and leader Ramadan Shalah publicly threatened America upon
consideration of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
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