Fathi Shaqaqi

The Shaqaqi family fled Zarnuqa during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War in fear of Israeli massacres, and were not allowed to return.

His mother died when he was fifteen.

The aim of the organization was the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state within the geographic borders of pre-1948 Mandatory Palestine.

Completely rejecting the political process, the organization professes that its goals can only be achieved through Islamic Jihad military means.

While an adherent of Islamism, Shaqaqi would later state to British journalist Robert Fisk that "We are not talking about theology, we are talking about politics and military things," adding that "Islam would be the idea we would start with, Palestine the goal to liberate and Jihad would be the way, the method."

He described the organization as a "crossing-point between nationalist and Islamism", and that his intentions were not to establish an Islamic state, but merely to "liberate all of Palestine."

Fisk was surprised that Shaqaqi neither greeted him with "As-salamu alaykum" nor quoted the Quran.

Speaking about his motives during the Fisk interview, Shaqaqi stated: "We are only defending our right to live in our homeland ... We lived in peace with Jews for centuries... I have no problem with Jews ... But I will fight occupation."

Fathi Ibrahim Abdulaziz Shaqaqi (فتحي إبراهيم عبد العزيز الشقاقي; 4 January 1951 – 26 October 1995) was a Palestinian physician, militant leader and the founder and Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Shaqaqi was born in the Gaza Strip to a refugee family and received his early education at a United Nations school.

He studied physics and mathematics at Bir Zeit University and later medicine at Mansoura University in Egypt.

Shaqaqi became a follower of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb.

Influenced by the Iranian Revolution, he wrote a book praising Ayatollah Khomeini's approach to an Islamic state.

The teachings of Qutb, who was executed by President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966 for supposedly plotting an Islamist revolution, convinced Shkaki that the "corrupt and secular governments" of the Arab world had to be replaced by Islamic societies politically, socially and culturally.

Shaqaqi came to believe that the PLO opposition to Israeli occupation was worthless and that only an Islamist organisations could achieve any political and military successes against Israel.

In 1970–1974, he taught mathematics at a school for orphans in East Jerusalem.

By the later 1970s Shaqaqi broke with both the Muslim Brotherhood and secular Palestinian nationalist groups, dismayed that the former spoke too little about Palestine and the latter too little on Islam.

In 1974 he moved to Egypt to study medicine at Mansoura University, specializing in pediatrics.

While studying medicine in Egypt he was an acquaintance of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, leader of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Salah Sariya, a Salafi Palestinian executed in 1976 on the charge of having plotted the assassination of President of Egypt Anwar Sadat.

He also became a follower of the ideas of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna.

He also read Marxist literature, including allegedly the entire works of Karl Marx.

As a university student in Egypt, Shiqaqi was inspired by the triumph of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the last Pahlavi Shah Mohammed Reza deposed in a popular uprising that culminated in the establishment of an Islamic Republic with long-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini as its spiritual figurehead.

He wrote a short book praising Khomeini's approach to Islamic governance titled Khomeini, The Islamic Solution and the Alternative, published in Cairo four days after the victory of the revolution.

In Shaqaqi's view the Khomeini victory "demonstrated that even against an enemy as powerful as the Shah, a jihad of determined militants could overcome all obstacles."

The book sold 10,000 copies in just two days, before it was promptly banned by the Egyptian government and Shiqaqi briefly arrested.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, of which Shiqaqi was a founding member, remains ideologically and militarily aligned with Iran, its largest supplier of weapons and aid.

In 1981, Shaqaqi co-founded Islamic Jihad with the goal of establishing a sovereign Islamic state across Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The organization rejected political processes, focusing on achieving its goals through military means.

As the PIJ leader, Shaqaqi masterminded several suicide bombings in Israel.

Upon receiving his medical degree in 1981, he worked in a general practice at Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem.

He later opened a medical clinic in Gaza.

During his studies at Birzeit University Shaqaqi became an admirer of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas.

In 1981, along with Abd Al Aziz Awda and five other Palestinian Islamist and Salafi leaders, he founded the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.

In an interview with Charles Richards of The Independent in 1992, Shaqaqi stated that his aim was a Palestine from the river to the sea "where all religions can live together in one state under Islamic Quranic law."

Fathi Shaqaqi's brother Khalil, after teaching in several universities in the United States, Kuwait and Bahrain, moved after the Oslo Peace Accords to the West Bank and is founding director of the Nablus-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, established in 1993.

Most of his early education was at the United Nations school.

He attended Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, where he studied physics and mathematics.

He was assassinated by Mossad agents in Malta in 1995, leading to a weakening of the PIJ until its resurgence after the Arab Spring.

Shaqaqi was born to a refugee family of eight children in the slums of a refugee camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

His family was originally from Zarnuqa near Ramlah, where they had lived for nearly five generations and his grandfather had served as the imam of the local mosque.