By Ivan Kesic
Ramadan Shalah, one of the founder-leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement and its former Secretary-General, passed away on this day, five years ago.
A pioneering resistance leader, Shalah served as the PIJ leader from 1995 to 2018, during which the Palestinian resistance movement against the Israeli occupation achieved many successes.
Born on January 1, 1958, in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City, Ramadan Abdullah Mohammed Shalah came from a Palestinian refugee family with 11 children.
After completing his secondary education, he traveled to Egypt to study economics, earning a bachelor’s degree from Zagazig University in 1981.
During his time as a student, he met the martyr Fathi Shaqaqi and proposed the idea of forming a Palestinian resistance organization. Shaqaqi revealed that he had already founded the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine, and Shalah soon joined him.
From that point forward, Shalah played a significant and prominent role in shaping the statements and ideology of the First Intifada.
Following his studies, he returned to Gaza and became a university professor in Shuja’iyya. However, as political activities intensified, he faced pressure and was ultimately expelled from the university.
Reflecting on his exile, Shalah remarked, “My family—my brothers and sisters—live in Gaza, but I am not allowed to visit them. Yet any American or Siberian Jew is permitted to take our land.”
In 1986, Shalah went to London for postgraduate studies and earned a doctorate in economics from Durham University, England, four years later.
He then moved to Kuwait, where he married, before returning to England and subsequently to the United States. Between 1993 and 1995, he served as a professor of West Asian studies and taught economics at the University of South Florida.
During his time in Florida, he established an Islamic research institute and engaged in various activities until 1995, when he traveled to Damascus to meet with Fathi Shaqaqi, the founder and Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad movement.
For six months, they organized joint actions aimed at developing resistance efforts in Palestine. However, after Shaqaqi was martyred by the Israeli spy agency Mossad in Malta, Shalah was elected as the new Secretary General at a subsequent meeting.
Shalah assumed leadership of the Islamic Jihad movement at a crucial moment in the mid-1990s, a period when political activities had largely stalled following the signing of the controversial Oslo Accords.
With the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Islamic Jihad movement, under Shalah’s leadership, played a significant role. The Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank became a symbol of the movement’s strength, earning fame for producing many heroes and martyrs.
Between 2005 and 2007, the Islamic Jihad movement was virtually the sole Palestinian group actively resisting the Zionist regime. Its power was further demonstrated during the 2014 war, when it launched long-range missiles targeting Tel Aviv and Netanya — cities located 70 and 120 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
Shalah’s open-minded leadership enabled the Islamic Jihad movement to maintain strong relations with most Palestinian factions, as well as with Islamic and Arab countries, over the past three decades.
By prioritizing the Palestinian cause and unity, Shalah set aside differences with Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza, fostering cooperation despite political divides.
Shalah also dedicated significant attention to the plight of Palestinian prisoners, approaching the issue without political or factional bias. Under his leadership, a relatively strong organization was established to support Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
During the Second Intifada, Israeli occupation authorities identified him as one of the key organizers of Palestinian resistance operations and pursued him aggressively for both his military and political roles.
In 2003, the US government designated him as a “terrorist” and, in 2007, placed a $5 million bounty on his assassination or capture. In 2017, the FBI added Shalah to its most-wanted list alongside 26 other individuals.
Moreover, due to intense US lobbying, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also included him on their sanctions lists.
Despite this, even his adversaries respected him for his unwavering principles and refusal to chase petty interests. His ultimate goal was the liberation of Palestine.
He was admired for his extensive knowledge, profound thinking, and strategic analytical abilities. Fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, Shalah was a deeply intellectual leader.
In 2018, Shalah fell into a coma due to illness and passed away in June 2020 at a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon. Officials from the Islamic Jihad movement stated his death was from natural causes and dismissed any suspicion of foreign interference.
In a 2020 interview with Iranian media, Nasser Abu-Sharif, the movement’s representative to Iran, described Shalah as a close friend of the late Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani.
Abu-Sharif noted that while their friendship was longstanding, and deepened significantly after 2006 and 2008, evolving into a brotherly bond.
Shalah was highly respected by General Soleimani and other Iranian leaders for his precise understanding of the regional situation, strategic insight, and detailed analyses, which they valued greatly.
He also met several times with the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, where both emphasized the crucial role of resistance in the liberation of Palestine.
