Gaza remembers Shqaqi, Jihad founder assassinated in Malta
Karl Schembri
From the roof of an abandoned five-storey building behind the massive stage, the view of thousands of Islamic Jihad supporters – around 40,000 – gathered in Khatiba Square in central Gaza City after Friday prayers was impressive.
Fourteen years since the assassination of their founding leader, Fathi Shqaqi, in Malta, this marginal yet fiery Islamist movement is still mobilising the masses in one way or another, vowing revenge on Israel and its annihilation while steadfastly refusing to engage in Palestinian elections and any negotiations for peace.
On the ground, young men covered from their heads in white sheets – the so-called martyrs-in-waiting who would be sent for the next suicide missions – marched over the Israeli flag while hundreds of others wore mock suicide bombers’ vests and carried plastic rockets, and others still burnt the Israeli and American flags.
A masked gunman standing on top of the building, clearly happy to be photographed, posed with his Kalashnikov for the picture.
“Where are you from?” he asked me.
In all my life, that question never seemed as risky as today. Many Palestinians have a vague idea of Malta as a peaceful and lovely island, but for any Jihadist, it is the place where Shqaqi became a “martyr”.
The faceless militant made the connection immediately, but luckily he also seemed convinced Malta was just a victim of what many believe to have been an Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) operation carried clandestinely on its shores.
The bearded doctor from Gaza born to a refugee family had founded the movement in 1979, inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran. He was previously active in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood but left in disappointment due to the movement’s belief back then that the Islamic world had to be unified to liberate Palestine.
Opposing secular Arab governments and declaring a holy war on Israel, Shqaqi is believed to be the first Palestinian to justify suicide attacks as part of an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel – distinguishing between prohibited suicide and martyrdom.
Arrested twice by Israel in the 1980s for subversive activities and subsequently deported to Lebanon and then to Syria, Shqaqi secured funding and solidified alliances outside the Palestinian territories with radical Shi’ite movements in Iran, Lebanon’s Hizballah and Damascus, which remain to this day.
In 1994, just a year before he was gunned down in Sliema, he was a key player in a coalition of factions rejecting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s signing of the Oslo Accords and the ensuing peace deal with Israel, embarking on a series of suicide attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. Months before his assassination, Shqaqi’s organisation claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a bus stop near Tel Aviv that killed more than 20 people.
On 26 October 1995, Shqaqi arrived in Malta by ferry from Libya using a fake Libyan passport in the name of Ibrahim Ali Shawesh, after reportedly meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Hours after landing, a man accompanied by a driver on a foreign-registered motorcycle – both wearing helmets – stopped him outside the Diplomat Hotel, where Shqaqi had booked a room, and shot him several times from point blank range in front of shocked onlookers and traffic. The hit man and the driver are believed to have escaped from Malta shortly afterwards on a speed boat.
The assassination sparked furious protests outside the Maltese embassy in Tripoli and a dramatic downturn in relations with Libya, which for some months suspended the ferry service with Malta – at the time its only link with the rest of the world.
Carried out under former Police Commissioner George Grech, the murder was never solved. The Maltese government never named anyone, nor did Israel ever comment on the case, but then foreign minister Guido de Marco had said “we would not accept any settling of scores in our country.”
For years after Shqaqi’s assassination, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out several other terrorist attacks with its leadership based in Damascus. The US government lists it as a foreign terrorist organisation committed to suicide bombings against the state of Israel.
Despite their apparently similar goals, Islamic Jihad is nowadays at loggerheads with Hamas, which currently rules the Gaza Strip. Unlike Hamas, which is far bigger and runs schools, hospitals and social services, Islamic Jihad has no social or political programme and is close to the Shi’ite Iranian regime and Lebanon’s Hizballah movement.
The movement still uses the same fiery rhetoric as its founding father’s, although in the last years it has been unable to carry out attacks in Israel. Yet Friday’s rally showed Shqaqi’s movement is still alive and its intentions remain as militant as when it was founded.
“Death to Israel,” the masses chanted in reply to one of the leaders’ calls from the podium. “Muhammad’s army will be back to wipe off the Jewish state.”
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