By David Hacham

Iran’s puppet in the Palestinian arena, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a purely military-terrorist organization with a clear pro-Iranian orientation.

With some 10,000 armed members, it is the second largest armed faction in Gaza behind the ruling faction, Hamas, which, while expressing support for PIJ so far, has not rushed to join in the combat – and for good reason, though this could change.

Designated as a terror organization by the United States, Britain, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Japan, the PIJ was founded by Gazan radical Islamists, who fused fanatical Islamic ideology with nationalism as a tool to promote the goal of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state. PIJ was the first organization to position itself as an alternative to the secular Fatah party.  

The Sunni PIJ is hugely dependent on external supporters, first and foremost, the Shi’ite Islamic Republic of Iran. It is no coincidence that PIJ’s leader, Ziyad Al-Nakhalah, has spent recent days in Tehran with his backers, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

PIJ is also dependent on support from the Assad regime in Syria, which permits Nakhalah to run a PIJ headquarters from Damascus, as well as from Beirut.

While the PIJ makes local operational decisions, they are in tune with the overall expectations and instructions that Iran transmits to its Palestinian proxy. Iran is actively behind the current escalation and is far from being a passive onlooker.  

Tehran finances almost the whole of the PIJ’s annual budget, and while it directly armed PIJ in past years, today PIJ produces rockets in Gazan factories, based on Iranian know-how.

The central question at the time of this writing is whether Hamas will join the fighting. At this stage, the impression is that Hamas is in no rush to get involved, and this is due to the fact that Hamas absorbed a painful blow from Israel during its own May 2021 conflict with Israel. Since then, Hamas has been licking its wounds, recovering militarily, rebuilding its rocket stockpiles, and encouraging civilian-economic-humanitarian rehabilitation efforts in Gaza as well.

Hamas thus has no immediate and real interest to join the fighting against Israel. It fears that doing so would set it back considerably in terms of military, civilian, and economic damages.

It is fair to assume that Israel’s combat objectives are designed to avoid encouraging Hamas from jumping into the fray. Israel has been focusing its military activity on pinpoint strikes on targets designed to avoid drawing Hamas into the fight.

Still, none of this guarantees that Hamas will remain uninvolved. In the event of an IDF operation resulting in the unintentional killing of large numbers of Palestinian civilians, not only would large-scale international pressure come down on Israel to end its campaign, but also, Hamas would be far more likely to join hostilities. As long as the operation continues, the risk of operational errors grows.

Precisely for this reason, Israel has an interest in limiting the extent of fighting to the extent that it can. On the other hand, PIJ has an opposite interest – in dragging out hostilities in the hope that the IDF makes a mistake, resulting in Hamas joining forces with PIJ on the battlefield.

Either way, even if a ceasefire is implemented in Gaza, observers should have no illusions. An escalation could erupt anew at any time. The conflict between Israel and Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a story that has no end.

Still, Israel does not want to get dragged into the Gazan mud in the form of a large-scale ground operation, which would result in Israeli casualties and damage national morale.

In addition, Israel has a clear set of priorities in terms of its security challenges, and Gaza is not at the top of the list. Iran and its nuclear program are very much at the top of the priority list, followed by Iranian entrenchment efforts in Syria, and Tehran’s military assistance to Hezbollah.

Hence, Israel cannot invest all of its energy in Gaza, when it has other threats to prioritize.

Israel took the initiative, launching Operation Breaking Dawn on August 5 and assassinating PIJ northern commander Taysar Jabari in a surprise aerial strike, along with additional strikes on PIJ attack cells approaching the Israeli border.

This was a similar opening to move to that employed in Operation Black Belt in November 2019, which began with the assassination of Baha Abu al-Atta, Jabari’s predecessor. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi presided over both targeted killing operations.

In both 2019 and now, the IDF worked to attack PIJ targets exclusively and tried to avoid an escalation with Hamas.

Jabari, 50, had previously served as deputy to his late predecessor, Abu al-Atta, as head of PIJ operations, and as a coordinator of PIJ activities with Hamas. Jabari coordinated hundreds of rocket launches at Israel during the May 2021 conflict. After surviving past assassination attempts, he met his end on Friday.

During the current operation, the head of PIJ’s southern division, Khaled Mansour, who was involved in rocket fire against Israel during the May 2021 conflict, was also killed by the IDF in a targeted strike.

After the May 2021 conflict, southern Israel experienced almost total quiet, something not seen in Gaza for years. Hamas and PIJ exploited this to rebuild their military capabilities, including replenishing their rocket stockpiles.  

Hamas reaped the benefits of international efforts aimed at rebuilding Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, led by Egypt, and ongoing Qatari financial support for needy Gazan families, as well as fuel for Gaza’s power plant. Israel also encouraged this process by providing permits for 15,000 Gazan workers to enter Israel for employment.  

This escalation could torpedo the process of Israeli civilian gestures toward the Gazan population.  

In the end, civilians on both sides are, once again, paying the cost for the uncompromising radical ideology of Gaza’s terror organizations, which are willing to sacrifice the lives of Palestinians for their own extremist goals. This operation is one more station in what Gaza’s Islamic terrorist groups see as a never-ending journey of conflict.  

David Hacham served for 30 years in IDF intelligence, is a former Commander of Coordination of Govt. Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and was advisor for Arab Affairs to seven Israeli Ministers of Defense. Read full bio here.