For decades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad had a home in Damascus. The Assad regime sheltered it, Iran supplied it, and Hezbollah connected it to fighters in Gaza. That infrastructure is gone now. The movement is running low on options.
Last week, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced the targeting of two PIJ members near Majdal Anjar, a town on the Lebanese-Syrian border, intercepted while trying to cross from Lebanon into Syria. It was the first Israeli strike of this kind since the November 2024 ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. The location was deliberate. It was a signal of where PIJ is operating and where it is trying to go.
Assad’s fall removed the movement’s most important base. Syria wasn’t just a political address for PIJ. It was the central node in a supply chain running from Tehran through Damascus to Hezbollah and down to Gaza. When Assad fell, that chain broke. Syria’s new leadership has since pledged to the United States that it will prevent armed factions from using Syrian soil and block weapons transfers to Lebanon, according to political analyst Nidal al-Sabe’, who spoke to Alhurra. “For PIJ, Syria was not symbolic. It was logistical,” a former CIA intelligence officer who tracked Iranian proxy networks in the Levant told Alhurra, on condition of anonymity.
PIJ tried to adapt. Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah described Assad’s fall as “an internal Syrian matter” and hoped Syria would stay sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It didn’t. In April, Syrian authorities arrested two PIJ leaders. Israeli airstrikes hit the movement’s Damascus headquarters and al-Nakhalah’s residence. The CIA officer said the arrests were more than political signaling. “When a host government begins detaining leadership figures rather than just signaling distance, that tells you the operating environment has fundamentally shifted,” he said.
The contrast with Hamas is useful here. Hamas built a regional network over the years, cultivating ties with Qatar, Turkey, and others, giving it political flexibility. PIJ never did. It stayed tethered to Tehran, politically, financially, and militarily. The CIA officer said this reflects structural degradation, not just tactical setbacks. “PIJ was always the most Tehran-dependent of the Palestinian factions,” he said. “Once you remove Damascus as a permissive hub and tighten Lebanese space, you’re compressing the organization back toward its patron. That reduces its maneuverability.” He added that PIJ’s isolation from Hamas carries its own dangers. “Hamas built diversified political relationships. PIJ never did. That makes contraction more dangerous. When an organization loses operational depth but not ideological rigidity, it may compensate for higher-risk activity.”
With Syria effectively closed, Lebanon is the most logical fallback. It borders Israel, Hezbollah is present, and Palestinian refugee camps provide some cover. But Lebanon is not the open terrain it once was. The country is fractured over Hezbollah’s weapons and regional role, economically broken, and in no condition to absorb another armed presence outside state authority. The CIA officer called Lebanon “increasingly restrictive terrain.” “If Beirut moves even partially toward a monopoly on arms inside camps, and Israel continues to strike with precision, PIJ’s external operating space narrows dramatically,” he said.
PIJ’s actual footprint in Lebanon reflects how far it has contracted. Hisham Debsi, director of the Development Center for Strategic Studies, describes its presence as “limited and small.” PIJ exists in most Palestinian refugee camps but has few members, no public bases, and no defined zones of influence. “Their military capabilities are mostly limited to individual light weaponry, and they rely on a clandestine pattern of movement,” Debsi told Alhurra. The threat of targeting has pushed the movement entirely underground, with no media presence and no official spokespersons operating inside Lebanon.
That invisibility is a measure of how much the organization has shrunk. PIJ was founded in the late 1970s by Fathi Shaqaqi and Palestinian students in Egypt, built on the conviction that armed struggle was the only legitimate path. Unlike Hamas, it never pursued political or administrative work, never built institutions, and never cultivated outside relationships. That rigidity deepened its dependence on Iran and narrowed every exit it had.
The Israeli strike in Majdal Anjar, the arrests in Syria, the bombed Damascus headquarters, and the cramped, clandestine existence inside Lebanon’s refugee camps all point to the same conclusion. Palestinian Islamic Jihad is not regrouping. It is contracting, pushed into a grey zone where it remains visible enough to be targeted but too constrained to act with any strategic purpose.
The question now is whether that grey zone holds, or whether the pressure eventually forces something desperate.
The article is a translation of the original Arabic.
